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The Last Policeman is a mystery/soft Science Fiction trilogy written by Ben H. Winters. Due to its concept, the trilogy is unlikely to expand.

In an alternate 2011, a new asteroid has been discovered, named 2011GV1 or "Maia". Unfortunately, it is headed straight towards us, and its impact is expected to be comparable to the global catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs. In essence, The End of the World as We Know It has arrived. In the midst of this is Concord, New Hampshire Police Detective, Henry Palace, known to friends as Hank or sometimes Hen. Palace is a recent promotion from uniformed service and takes his job very seriously. With humanity's time on the planet reduced to a few remaining months, he has his work cut out for him convincing anyone that his cases matter.

In 2012's The Last Policeman the first novel of the trilogy, a body is found hanged in a Concord fast food restaurant. The initial assumption is that the victim was a suicide, but that explanation doesn't sit right with Palace.

In 2013's Countdown City, Palace has been downsized from the police force, along with the rest of the detectives. Nonetheless, he takes a case for Martha Cavatone, a former babysitter who helped raise him and his sister Nico, agreeing to help find Martha's husband Brett.

In 2014's World of Trouble, Palace is living in Massachusetts, in a house with other retired police from Concord. He leaves for Ohio to find his sister, and in the last days before impact makes other horrifying discoveries.

Tropes introduced in The Last Policeman:

  • Alternate History: Based on the calendar format used it very clearly takes place in an alternate 2011-2012.
  • Anyone Can Die: Each book sees major characters die, often violently. Given the setting, "Everyone Will Die," might be more accurate.
  • Apocalypse How: A big focus of the trilogy is how the knowledge of the coming apocalypse affects society before Maia actually hits. A Class 3b is on the way, but the world is already at a Class 1 by the start of the first book as people deal with their despair. It first reaches a Class 2 by the end of Countdown City. By the time of "World Of Trouble" it is a high Class 2 with most of civilization either gone or few and far between.
  • Colony Drop: The Apocalypse How of this particular Armageddon, a 6.5-kilometer asteroid nicknamed Maia, is about to hit the earth in just over six months.
  • Driven to Suicide: Detective Andreas who throws himself in front of a out of service bus stolen by a group of joyriding teenagers after his mental health declines throughout the novel due to the events around Maia.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Fighting past official indifference and doubt that there's a case here, Palace both proves the apparent suicide was a murder and catches the culprit. He and the rest of the detectives are immediately let go when the Justice Department takes over the Concord PD.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The killer is just trying to make money to ensure a happy, sheltered life for his son in the months before the meteor hits and commits murder out of terror of losing him if his drug-dealing was exposed.
  • Fling a Light into the Future: a side character appearing near the end of the book is a woman preparing to launch a satellite with Earth's culture preserved on various documents and flash-drives into orbit before the meteor hits, hoping enough of humanity will survive intact to retrieve it in a few generations. Peter Zell gave her a tape he made to also put onboard, but Henry chooses not to listen to it out of respect.
  • Functional Addict: Detective McGully, albeit his use is limited to legal substances such as cigars and marijuana (legalized in the pre-impact laws while increasing penalties for harder drugs). And Naomi, who had a past addiction to heroin and ended up relapsing once it became clear that Maia was going to hit the Earth.
  • Just Before the End: A few months left in this book. Naturally, the time frame shrinks in the two sequels.
  • Made of Iron: Henry receives significant injuries in each book, but they never seem to slow him down. He starts each book fully healed from the previous one. Countdown City is especially guilty of this; Alice Fenton strongly implies that Hank will lose function in his right arm as a result of the hospital's lack of resources. The injury isn't even mentioned in World of Trouble.
  • Myth Arc: The group of conspirators Nico and her husband belong to are subplots in the first two books before becoming the main focus of World of Trouble.
  • Never Suicide: Henry's instinct about the case.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: You don't have even the slight technological advances associated with 20 Minutes into the Future. If anything there's the opposite. This is especially the case the further on in the series.
  • Off the Wagon: Peter Zell, the victim, got into drugs for a while, and this caused recovering heroin addict Naomi Eddes to relapse as well.
  • Police Procedural: In a mid-sized city at the end of the world.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons: Part of the reason Henry is so suspicious is because of an odd bruise Zell got the day before he died, claiming to have fallen down the stairs when he could have really been beaten up. In the final chapter, Henry has succeeded in proving Zell was murdered, but learns that the reasons for his suspicions were wrong while he's visiting the last insurance customer that Zell met with: she tells him to watch the stairs on his way out, as Zell fell down a broken step and hurt his face when he was leaving.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: Henry is very different from his younger sister Nico. She's always been headstrong and a rebel, and she refuses to accept that there's no chance to save the world. Henry's main form of rebellion is to continue to do his job when his colleagues and higher-ups don't think he should bother, and he's mostly resigned to the end.
  • Suicide by Cop: J. T. Toussaint, a local handyman with drug ties, attacks Henry with the pointed end of a model of the New Hampshire capital building made by his father, getting shot to death by the other cops as a result.
  • Token Good Cop: Henry, and later Trish and Culverson, remain grounded, professional, hard-working cops even though human civilisation is Just Before the End, while many of their coworkers are nervous wrecks or see no need to show much restraint and professionalism.

Tropes introduced in Countdown City:

  • The Cavalry: Henry is bleeding out from a gunshot wound, far from civilization and with no hope of rescue. Until Nico and company show up with a goddamn helicopter. This avoids being a Deus ex machina because the fact that her group of co-conspirators has access to one becomes a plot point for this book and the next.
  • Foreshadowing: McGully warns Culverson and Palace that they should get out of Concord now before the water runs out.
  • From Bad to Worse: In the first book, things like internet access and cell service are unreliable. They are completely dead by the start of Countdown City, with electric power gone as well. The novel's climax takes place during riots over the water going out as well.
  • How About a Smile?: Nico's friend Jordan helps Henry a few times and always makes a big deal about how Henry never thanks him. Their last interaction in the book he actually does get a sincere "thank you".
  • Mistaken for Cheating: One of the reasons Brett took off was because it looked like Martha had started up with one of her exes. This is a ruse by their coworker Jeremy, who wants Martha for himself. He even wrote a fake note to make it look like she was cheating on Brett
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Jeremy shoots Brett dead to make sure he won't return to Martha.
  • Noodle Incident: The exact events of the fourth of July are never recounted in much detail, although Palace mentions that his neighbor, Mr Moran, was murdered during them while trying to protect a truck driver that was delivering aid to a faculty for refugees from the area Maia was supposed to impact directly. Suffice to say, it was bad.
  • Retail Riot: Riots of this type have already been implied even in the first book, where there was some minor rioting during Presidents Day and the Fourth of July incident. However, once the water runs out, there is a massive citywide riot that destroys most of the city of Concord.
  • You Can't Go Home Again: Henry's house, and most of Concord is burned down during a citywide riot after the water goes out.

Tropes introduced in World of Trouble:

  • After the End: Maia hasn't hit yet, but by the start of the book the social institutions that were faltering at the opening of the trilogy have mostly collapsed. Many places have burnt to the ground in the meantime. The end result is a world that is practically unrecognizable when compared to the year before.
  • Apocalypse Cult: The conspiracy Nico was working with turns out to be this.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Palace finds one early in the book, written by Rotary, Ohio's only detective. It stretches from roughly the time of the first book (when electronic record keeping became unreliable) until 16 weeks previous. It details the collapse of the town police department and ultimately the town itself. The place is a ghost town by the time Palace arrives.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Palace finds out who killed his sister and makes peace with them, but he, along with most of humanity, will die when Maia strikes the Earth the next day
  • Cult Colony: A small one located in the basement of a small Ohio town's police department.
  • Dead All Along: Nico was dead before Hank ever set foot in Rotary, Ohio.
  • Doomed Hometown: After most of Concord burned down during the events of Countdown City, the final book takes place mostly in the fictional city of Rotary, Ohio, with Henry looking for Nico.
  • Hidden Elf Village: Henry chances onto a secluded Amish farm still functioning normally in the last week before Maia hits. Their patriarch has kept Maia's existence a secret from them, under a cover that the outside world is grappling with a plague.
  • Ruins of the Modern Age: Already beginning to show up just nine months after the confirmation that Maia would strike the Earth.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: In both a micro and macro sense.
    • In the trilogy as a whole, the theme of pointlessness keeps cropping up. If everyone is going to be dead by the end of October, what does it matter what people do before then?
    • In World of Trouble specifically, Henry spends two days searching for a sledgehammer, fractures several ribs, and nearly burns to death, just so he can access the basement he's certain Nico is hiding in. It turns out that she's been dead the whole time, and if he had just waited for Jeanne to wake up, she would have shown him so.
  • Suicide Pact: Subverted. While it initially looks like Nico's friends have committed mass suicide, it's revealed that they were tricked into drinking poison by Astronaut so he could help himself to their supplies.
  • Undercover Cop Reveal: Jordan turns out to be with the FBI.

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