The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

It's been a while since I worked on my StoryGraph Onboarding Challenge, so I decided to finish out the month by tackling a few of those prompts. The first prompt I tackled was to read one of my five oldest to-be-read books. I've been steadily adding books to my Goodreads TBR list for several years now. Every once in a while I go through and reorganize it, pruning titles I am no longer interested in. Even so, my list is currently 950 books long. I know. I have a serious addiction to browsing book titles and making lists. Anyway, I scrolled way down to the first few books on the list and figured out that the oldest novel on there was The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. I first heard of this book from a book-themed desk calendar I had several years ago. It's a detective novel, which isn't a genre I am normally drawn to, but the summary of this one was really intriguing to me. Since it was the actual oldest book on my list, I decided to use it for the challenge prompt.

The plot follows Hank Palace, a new detective working in Concord, New Hampshire. Being a detective is his calling and he loves his job, but it has gotten a lot more difficult lately. Scientists have recently announced that a large asteroid is on a collision course with earth. It will destroy all human life when it strikes in six months. All of a sudden, police work has become quite different. With the end of the world rapidly approaching, crime is on the rise and new laws are being placed on the books to attempt to hold society together. Many people simply walk off their jobs, failing to see the point in continuing on. Others turn to drugs to ease the stress of their approaching doom. Many others give up all together and commit suicide. 

Hank isn't giving up though, and he still carries on doing solid detective work in spite of the asteroid. So when he is called out to investigate a suicide in a McDonald's bathroom, he doesn't simply settle for the obvious conclusions. Something about the crime scene feels off to him. He comes to believe that this "suicide" is actually a cleverly disguised murder, and begins digging into the victim's life to try and discover the truth. He carries on following his instincts, even though almost all his colleagues encourage him to just call it a suicide and move on. As he uncovers more and more clues though, it becomes clear that something deeper is going on and it's up to him to figure it out.

I thought that this novel was pretty good, if a little bland. The central mystery itself was standard detective novel fare, but the element of the asteroid racing towards earth gave the story interesting new dimensions. Exploring the behavior of people facing imminent death made you rethink everyone's motives. When you don't really have to plan for the future anymore, you act differently, and watching Hank try to reason out why people make the choices they do in a world that's about to end was engaging. I moved through the story quickly, and was never really bored.

Unfortunately, aside from the approaching asteroid, there was nothing especially memorable about this book. I enjoyed it and there was nothing specifically wrong with it, but I don't think I'm going to remember much about it once a few weeks have passed. This is book one of a trilogy, and I don't feel the need to explore the other novels. It just didn't grab me enough to want to continue. It was quite interesting to actually read the book that has been on my TBR list the longest though, and it was a very nice break from the heavier stuff I've been reading lately. All in all, I'm not mad about The Last Policeman, and I would recommend it to any detective novel fans looking for an easy, quick read with some unique elements. 

Challenge Tally

StoryGraph Onboarding 2020 Challenge: 7/12

Total Books Read in 2020: 78