Countdown City

August 12, 2013
In this sequel to Edgar Award-winning The Last Policeman, Winters intensifies his vision of a lawless apocalyptic society as an asteroid nicknamed "Maia" continues its deadly trajectory toward Earth. Impact: October 3rd. Seventy-seven days from when the narrative picks up. Set in Concord, N.H., where the police force is fraying and money has no value, people are frantically fleeing the Eastern Hemisphere to seek refuge from Maia's direct path, amidst hundreds of U.S. citizens who are simply disappearing. Narrator and straight-laced detective Hank Palace has lost his job, but he still can't resist helping his childhood babysitter Martha Cavatone locate her missing husband. With the end of the world nighâand a bike as his only mode of transportationâthis is no easy task. Clues lead Palace to a colonization of radicals who've overtaken the University of New Hampshire and followed by a forsaken coastal fort used to execute catastrophe immigrants as they approach the shore. While not as well paced or marvelously original as its predecessor, this second installment in a planned trilogy is darker, more violent and more oppressive. Through it all Palace remains a likeable hero for end times, and with Concord already in ruins, readers are left to wonder how he'll survive to tell his final tale.

May 1, 2013
As the world's inevitable demise draws near, a former cop refuses to shirk what he takes to be his moral responsibilities. Impelled by an inner sense of duty, former Concord police detective Hank Palace starts on a mission to find missing Brett Cavatone when his wife, Hank's former baby sitter, begs him to take the case. As Hank measures the remaining 77 days before asteroid Maia hits, in servings of dog food for his bichon frise Houdini, he's a man on a mission that, even if successful, may be altogether meaningless. But he has no purpose greater than going through the professional and ethical motions. His stoicism stands in stark contrast with the activism of his sister Nico, who, with her revolutionary friends, is convinced there's a government conspiracy to be found out. Hank must blend in with Nico's world if he's to have any hope of learning what happened to Brett, who's a bit more unpredictable than his wife has led Hank to believe. Even if rumors of a government conspiracy aren't true, civilization is abuzz with secret factions and alliances Hank must understand in order to find out the truth before the clock runs down. Some of the melancholy charm of the first in this series (The Last Policeman, 2012) is dissipated, for Hank solves a less inventive mystery set against, rather than fully integrated into, a hopeless backdrop.

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June 1, 2013

Hank Palace, protagonist of the Edgar Award-winning The Last Policeman, returns in this sequel, set 77 days before an asteroid will destroy Earth. Things have gotten worse in New Hampshire: Hank has been fired since all police work has been federalized, his sister is still running with a group that claims that it's all a government conspiracy and only they can save the world, and an old family friend asks him to find her husband. Hank reluctantly agrees, but with so many people dropping out to pursue their bucket lists and no telephones or electricity, it won't be easy. VERDICT Winters has written another complex mystery with plenty of possible motives, suspicious characters, and rich details of a society slowly coming apart, although the local library remains open, of course, staffed by its dedicated librarians and volunteers. As the end nears for Hank and the rest of the world, he struggles to find both the missing husband and a reason to keep looking. Anyone who enjoyed Winters's previous novel will like this outing, as will other readers interested in a good mystery in an innovative setting.--Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2013
For those who haven't read The Last Policeman (2012), here's what you need to know: the world is doomed. An asteroid is going to smash into the planet earth in the very near future. Society is in disarray. A lot of people have already checked out, via suicide or just vanishing entirely. Law and order is more of an idea than a practical reality. Hank Palace is a police officerwell, he used to be, before the police department was shut down a few months ago. Now, like most people, he's unemployed. When an old friend asks him to find her missing husband, Hank reluctantly agrees. But how do you find a missing person when half the people in the country aren't where they're supposed to be? As with the first Hank Palace novel (this is volume 2 of a projected trilogy), the mystery element is strong, and the strange, pre-apocalyptic world is highly imaginative and also very plausibleit's easy to think that the impending end of the world might feel very much like this. Genre mash-up master Winters is at it again.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)