Former detective Henry Palace was forcibly retired from the Concord Police Department sometime around the time that the chance of asteroid impact was raised to 100% and the Justice Department took over. That was a while ago, when hospitals and fresh water still existed.

Delusional interstellar psychosis.

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Now Palace is riding his bike—with dog in tow—across state lines, tracking down leads, to find his sister, Nico, who has joined an underground cell that claims to have a way to save the world.

Why is this on our bookshelf?

This is the third book in The Last Policeman series. The second book, Countdown City, won the 2013 Philip K Dick award for Distinguished Science Fiction. We’ve reviewed the previous two books in this series, interviewed the author, and were very excited to finally received the third and final book.

The final book, of course, holds the answer to our much-debated question: will the world end?

In addition, Hank Palace can be quite geeky. During the World of Trouble blog tour, Ben H. Winters promised to share some of the geeky moments in the Last Policeman Trilogy with us.

Rating (4 stars)

In the previous two books Palace has been investigating murders and suspicious missing persons. He’s chased down bad guys, been shot at, and gotten into fisticuffs with perps. However, this book takes on a different tone as the date of the asteroid strike nears.

Palace is, once again, taking on a missing person’s case. But this time it’s personal. The bad guys are unexpected, the clues are sparse, and time is seriously running out. There’s nothing quite like an impending apocalypse to make you a veteran detective.