Countdown City by Ben H Winters

Countdown City (The Last Policeman, #2)

by Ben H Winters

Set three months before the deadly asteroid 2011GV1 is due to hit Earth, this Last Policeman sequel chronicles the further adventures of Hank Palace. The Concord Police Department is now operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, and Hank is out of a job-until he's hired by a business tycoon to help find the man's estranged son. Hank's search leads him to a visibly collapsing East Coast landscape where anti-immigrant militia patrol the shores, fending off droves of people fleeing the "impact zone" of the asteroid.

Reviewed by inlibrisveritas on

4 of 5 stars

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Countdown City picks up shortly after The Last Policeman closes, with Hank Palace being out of a job but unable to stop helping people. This one centers around his old babysitter and her missing husband, but also continues to highlight the world around him as time moves forward and the end of the world becomes more tangible.

I love Hank. I marveled over his ability to keep focused on helping people even though everyone else is focused on living their last moments by seeing the world or crossing items off of their bucket list. Not Hank. He’s lost his job as a detective, but he’s still working and when his old babysitter tells him she can’t find her husband he sets off on a case that many would consider pointless. His journey to find Brett Cavatone leads him back to his sister Nico and her extremely optimistic “mission”. The entirely of this novel focuses on his diehard determination to do the job he has always wanted to do, even when it makes no sense to continue. In some ways it does seem like Hank is in denial about the end of the world, and more than one person asks him “why bother” throughout. Countdown City is his slow realization that he has sort of been spinning his wheels bit.

The pre-apocalyptic world is getting even messier as well, and I really enjoyed seeing more about the people around Hank. We see people try to compensation for the lack of government by making utopian societies, people with extremely HUGE ideas about how to survive, and people who are thriving now that they economy has allowed them to earn a profit of sorts. The mystery itself is a great addition, but readers will find that it’s not at the forefront of the story and find their attention being focused on the deteriorating society more than the missing person’s case.

Countdown City is a fantastic follow up to The Last Policeman and I can’t wait to delve into World of Trouble.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 8 November, 2014: Finished reading
  • 8 November, 2014: Reviewed