The Last Policeman

By Josh M.

I didn’t find exactly what I was originally looking for in this book, but I found a great story nonetheless. I was handed this book when I mentioned I enjoyed world building over character driven stories. I had assumed this story would be similar to the story that originally peaked this interest (World War Z) in that their wouldn’t be a main character but many characters experiencing different parts of the world. Instead the story centers around one character, Detective Henry Palace in a world with one foot in the grave.

When I first read this I assumed the world building would be delivered in a similar fashion to World War Z, but I found a different but also not so different way of showing off the world. While Henry never actually left the general area of New Hampshire the world outside constantly flooded into the story, despite Henry’s desire to not hear about it. It may feel like having a main character actively attempting to get the news of world away from his view is counterproductive for world building, but not only do we still get said information, given the persistent nature of desperate, dying people. Henry is still delivered the dreaded info, his reactions and desire to not hear about it is also great character building.


While the story does deliver what I originally desired from the read it brought so much more. I’ve always loved a good mystery, the idea of not truly knowing what’s going on, the idea of a story, aergo the culprit being able to trick me. This story has a lot of that, following the case of the alleged hanger Peter Zell. At the beginning of the book a dead body is found at a local McDonald’s, seemingly a suicide, a more and more common gruesome occurence in the nearly ended world. While Henry’s colleagues seem happy enough to stamp the death as a hanger, Detective Palace isn’t so convinced. The story follows Henry going through many leads to try and find a killer that all around him, including myself at certain points in the reading felt was completely nonexistent. I loved not knowing what was going on with the case, and more importantly, Henry. At times it truly felt he was simply using the case to distract himself from the deteriorating world around him with no other reasoning, but then some promising evidence shows up and I’m not certain what to think.


This book represents something I’ve always wanted to do in my own writing, an actual example of which being one of my creative writing projects, I’d like to be able to capture the essence of not knowing everything there is to when it comes to Henry Palace. I liked that even when I was in Henry’s head, heard his thoughts, felt his feelings I didn’t really know how the man ticked. The fact that I can’t truly believe the main character in his hunches and intentions is a very out of body way to experience a story, it brings you a lot more into the story.

This story is a prime example of multiple genres meeting in the middle to create a wonderful amalgamation of good writing. World War Z was very inspiring to pursue stories that focus more on world building, and this story has done a similar job in inspiration, that desire not just to build a world but apply other genres I enjoy to them. One of which I’ve always adored being mystery, but I’ve never felt I had a chance of doing it myself, not being able to figure out investigations and the like myself I feel underqualified making a story meant to stump those trying to snub it out. I plan to read more stories in the mystery genre in hopes of being able to write my own in the genre one day.