New Books In Science Fiction

It’s no surprise that when scientists in Ben H. Winters‘ The Last Policeman series declare that a 6.5-mile asteroid is going to destroy life as we know it on October 3, civilization starts to unravel. Governments collapse. People quit their jobs and abandon their families. Survivalists stock up on guns and food, imagining there’s a way to outsmart the impending holocaust. Fatalists sink into hedonism, depression or suicide. And then there’s Hank Palace, a detective on the Concord, N.H., police force and the eponymous star of Winter’s trilogy. Faced with the end of the world, Palace does the almost unthinkable: he keeps doing his job. “He’s taken an oath to uphold the law … and to him an oath is an oath, a promise is a promise, and it doesn’t matter what the context is,” Winters says in his New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy interview. Palace remains dedicated to his job as he tries to: determine whether an apparent suicide is actually a murder