The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters, is a fun read. If you enjoy thinking about the end of the world, that is. If you don't then it's really more of a depressing read. But it has its bright spots, even so.Winters' protagonist is an earnest, newly promoted detective named Hank Palace. The end times are upon us and the whole world is aware because humanity is facing the impending arrival of an extinction-level cosmic collision. For some reason Hank seems to be the last person left trying to hold together civilization as things progressively fall apart.
There is a mystery at the heart of the novel, and watching it unfold gives the reader a reason to stick with the story. More intriguing to me was the observations of the characters about how the world had descended into disarray as society unravels and individuals deal with their mortality staring them in the face.
Hank is the ultimate Boy Scout as he pursues truth and justice against all odds, the whole world either turned against him or profoundly apathetic to his cause. His perseverance is reassuring, that even against impossible odds some people will still do the Right Thing.
I've been intrigued with this sort of doomsday scenario ever since we got the double cinematic whammy of Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998. The idea that a large space-borne object could be our undoing seems to live more prominently in our collective consciousness now, as evidenced by efforts to track and catalog transient objects in and around our solar system, and to assign them collision probabilities when they're found.
I find this type of event a likely candidate to fulfill this prophecy from the book of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 30:
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.In the story one of the characters tells Hank that waiting for the asteroid to arrive, with the collision months away as it crosses the vastness of space, has left her overwrought by the "unbearable imminence" of the thing. If we ever find ourselves in a similar situation I'll be processing everything in the context of Matthew 24, and while there may be some trepidation about the future I'd be inclined to see the whole thing as part of a larger plan instead of just Earth losing a high-stakes game of chance. I would be looking forward to it, although I'm sure that navigating the pre-collision disintegration of the world would present its own challenges.
That's what I liked most about this book. It painted a plausible picture of how that disintegration might proceed. It's a good reminder that looking forward to the last days may be a fun pastime, but there will undoubtedly be more than a few bumps in the road. It will come when it's time. Best to enjoy the blessing of the moment, and not hurry along the challenges of the future in whatever form they'll arrive.
