World of Trouble

The final book in the three covering the last six months of Henry "Hank" Palace's life before the giant asteroid hits Earth. Hank is settled in a good situation, a big group house, all former cops, in the Berkshire area living with Trish McConnell from his own Concord NH force, but he can't rest easy. Nico, his beloved and mercurial sister, who he has promised to take care of, has disappeared out west somewhere intent on some cockamamie plan to save the world. He must go after her. And so he goes, with his little dog and with Cortez, one of the more colorful characters, whom he encountered in the second book. So this book gets the reader out of New England and traveling to far Ohio (by bicycle, remember) as the last days wind down. They show more find where Nico is supposed to be, but then they find an almost dead girl, not Nico, and clues that convince Hank that Nico had been there recently. There is a desperate determination in this one, Hank is driven to find her, driven by his compulsion to Know, and it keeps him busy and sane, just barely, saner than most people. Don't read this looking for a happy ending, but Hank has lived a very full life in the six months we've known him; he has no regrets, other than the fact of the asteroid, so neither should we, whatever happens. ***** show less

From my blog at https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/world-of-trouble-by-ben-h-winters-or-...

“Almost always, things are exactly as they appear. People are continually looking at the painful or boring parts of life with the half-hidden expectation that there is more going on beneath the surface, some deeper meaning that will eventually be unveiled; we’re waiting for the saving grace, the shocking reveal. But almost always things just are what they are, almost always there’s no glittering ore hidden under the dirt.“

I’ve been reading two books about asteroids hitting Earth with opposite reactions. In [b:Lucifer's Hammer|218467|Lucifer's Hammer|Larry show more Niven|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388268115l/218467._SY75_.jpg|1842237], I’m literally forcing myself to pick up the book and read, hoping I’ll get to the point where the magic will develop and I’ll remain engaged until the end. Then there is The Last Policeman trilogy which has kept me riveted–to the point where I’ve finished the entire trilogy before reaching page 200 in Hammer. Same rough plot line in both: an impending asteroid is headed toward Earth. The brilliance of The Last Policeman is that the scenario is based on an Everyman hero, a police officer advanced beyond his skill level, who has been choosing to solve mysteries in the last six months of life. Hammer explores the end of the world with a much larger cast, and as such, loses focus on the human tragedy, sacrificing quiet truth for plot points. Both acknowledge that despair will have some likely outcomes: “The most likely scenario, after all, is that this blood is the blood of a stranger, and these knives are totally unrelated to my current investigation. It’s just some terrible act of violence among uncounted terrible acts of violence occurring at an accelerating rate.”

World of Trouble, the final book in The Last Policeman trilogy was a powerful, moving read. Plotting stays true to the first two books while advancing both the story about the end of the world and the story of Henry Palace’s development. Or rather, de-volvement. Palace has left the safety and security of the house he was living at and has set off with the hoarder and trader Cortez for Ohio to search for his sister Nico.

This has been an extremely interesting series: engaging, somewhat unsettling, with a background of rising tension–much like The Southern Reach Trilogy. For me, The Last Policeman trilogy is about the meat of what it means to be human and what it means to be a member of society. “And the fact is that what Cortez said actually has the ring of truth. Not that kind of girl. But neither was Peter Zell that kind of guy. Nobody is the kind of person they used to be.” Winters is a genius with character–much like Tana French–and while I generally start out liking Peter, I end up liking him less and less, because I want him to be so much more than he is. I want him to be the hero. I want him to solve people’s problems, I want him to live with integrity in the face of society’s breakdown, and I want him to take care of the damn dog instead of letting it run around matted and limping. And though he continues to disappoint, I still have compassion for him because he is so very human. And so very familiar: “I was right, all along, in my pedantic obnoxious small-minded insistence that the truth was true.”

There’s humor here, so there are a few moments of levity in the midst of the missing persons search and the impending impact. A side remark about the DSM-IV for “astromania’ made me snicker, and one particular image struck me with its brilliance: “It’s like the man has re-created his natural habitat below the world, a scumbag terrarium.” But mostly I keep reading for the truths Winter leads me to and Palace’s evolving understanding of humanity:

“It’s not just a person’s present that dies when they die, when they are murdered or drowned or a giant rock falls on their head. It’s the past, too, all the memories that belonged only to them, the things they thought and never said. And all those possible futures, all the ways that life might have turned out. Past and future and present all burn up together like a bundle of sticks.“

Highly recommended. show less

It’s September 27th. There’s less than a week to go before humanity ends.



And the spoiler here is that there’s no spoiler. Winters has the courage of his concept. There will be no last-minute reprieve.



But there’s dying alone in a ditch and dying with those you love, and our hero Hank Palace wants to die with Nico, his baby sister that he’s sworn to protect. They’re the last two members of their family in the world.



But Hank hasn’t seen Nico since she improbably saved him from bleeding out with a helicopter in the proceeding novel Countdown City. They had a falling out over truth. Hank held the world was doomed from a pending asteroid strike on October 3rd. Nico contended the shadowy group she was a part of had a plan and show more means (who else has a helicopter?) to divert the asteroid before impact.



When Concord, New Hampshire largely burned down, Hank and his friend and seeming new lover, Officer McConnell, fled to a mansion a bunch of law enforcement types and their families have stockpiled with goods to wait out the end. Cortez, a practical, cunning thief (and possible killer), buys his way into the compound with a supply of coffee beans and Hank’s vouchsafing.



Cortez encourages Hank to look for his sister and, following on the trail of the now vanished Jordan, Nico’s creepy, arrogant confederate, Hank learns she has fled to Rotary, Ohio to effect some scheme to save the Earth.



In Rotary’s deserted police station, the men discover Nico was there shortly before them. There’s a nearly dead woman found in the nearby woods, her throat cut and a patch of recently poured cement on the station’s floor. Convinced that the secret of Nico’s whereabouts is below, Hank sets off on a quest to find the tools to break through the cement.



Hank is running out of space to make notes in his last blue essay exam book, and he’s running out of purpose. Solving murders serves society by giving answers to it and deterring wrong doing. But what’s the point when society itself is dead? And is truth the highest value if it comes between you and those you love most?



And, when Hank returns to Rotary, more secrets will be revealed. Hank will ruefully note what a bad judge of character he can be, and every character will have, to borrow another author’s phrase, a death to die.



Winters’ trilogy is moving and memorable and unique and deserves its acclaim. show less

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: There are just 14 days until a deadly asteroid hits the planet, and America has fallen into chaos. Citizens have barricaded themselves inside basements, emergency shelters, and big-box retail stores. Cash is worthless; bottled water is valuable beyond measure. All over the world, everyone is bracing for the end.

But Detective Hank Palace still has one last case to solve. His beloved sister Nico was last seen in the company of suspicious radicals, armed with heavy artillery and a plan to save humanity. Hank's search for Nico takes him from Massachusetts to Ohio, from abandoned zoos and fast food restaurants to a deserted police station where he uncovers evidence of a brutal crime. With time running show more out, Hank follows the clues to a series of earth-shattering revelations.

The third novel in the Last Policeman trilogy, World of Trouble presents one final pre-apocalyptic mystery – and Hank Palace confronts questions way beyond whodunit: How far would you go to protect a loved one? And how would you choose to spend your last days on Earth?

My Review: If there is one series I can *COUNT*ON* not to have extra volumes, it's this one. I can't imagine I'm spoilering this for anyone. The world ends the same time the book does.

Leading up to that finale to end all finales is our buddy Hank doin' his Hankly duty: Looking for his sister Nico and finding the odds and sods of wherever he is in his way. Of course, he has erstwhile baddie Cortez and poor, sick Houdini the dog in tow. Each presents Hank with different kinds of drags on his none-too-swift progress. Each has some claim on him. All the way through these three novels, Hank Palace has been on the Hero's Journey, with all the trappings. It's more stark in this concluding (!) volume.

But there's a reason humans have kept this storyline around so long: It's riveting. Even with the literal end of the world looming, it matters, matters, that Hank finds his sister. We want him to succeed in his quest! What possible meaning can a quest have to people who will be discrete atoms in a matter of weeks, days, finally hours.

Put something in a pressure cooker and, when the lid's open, it's very obvious what it's made of. It's the same with people. Hank? He's made of stern, strong stuff. He's taken on the pain and the fear of each person he's met and he's done his level best to rid them of it; even when he can't he's changed the others to better fit around their pain.

In his own last hours, suffering mightily the curse of the strong to bear more burdens than their own, Hank seeks out the last human he knows whose strength matches his own. As Life ends, Hank holds the hand of a girl whose burdens are as his own, and they know that moment of glad sharing we all seek after for all our lives. show less

The 'Last Policeman' trilogy is a wonderful achievement. It considers what happens when all of us find out that we have no future. That, in a few months time, an asteroid is going to strike and the world is going to end. That all we have is now. That there is no later. What makes it unique is that the story is told through the eyes of Hank Palace, a neuroatypical man for whom the end of the world has brought the fulfilment of an ambition. He finally gets to be a homicide detective.



The first book, 'The Last Policeman' was a slow burner that I underestimated when I first read it but which was still glowing in my imagination months later. It wasn't the plot of Palace trying to solve a murder in a world that's falling apart that stuck with show more me. It was the overwhelming feelings of despair and desperation that the book was soaked in that clung to me like gasoline in my clothes.

Palace is the last policeman because it never occurs to him to stop. He has no social life. He knows he doesn't fit in, that he's different. All he has is police procedure and a stubborn determination to do his job.

The most disturbing thing for me was that I started to wonder how like Hank Palace I was. I was in my mid-fifties when I read the first book. I knew I was going to die. That everyone I knew is going to die. That nothing I did would last. That my personal world would end in a couple of decades or less and yet I plodded on doing my job. That's the power of Ben Winters' writing. To let you see the world through a first-person account from this passionate, neuroatypical man, knowing that you'll see the world Palace describes differently than Palace does but challenging you to consider how clear your own vision is.



I left it nearly a year before I read the second book in the series 'Countdown City' set seventy days before the asteroid strike. Here's what I wrote at the time.

“Countdown City” is not a very exciting book. It’s too realistic for that. Excitement is replaced by controlled despair, desperate hedonism, creative denial and a slow but inexorable ending of everything for everyone. What kept me turning the pages was Hank Palace. He is a strange man: honest, loyal, law-abiding and almost totally lost in the world he lives in. There were times I wanted to scream at him and slap him and make him wake up and face reality, except I think I prefer his reality to mine. In his place, I believe I would just stop. Hank creates purpose and meaning for himself and does his best to help others. If this makes him Quixotic then I guess that shows that Don Quixote was a nicer man than I am.

One of the things that started to emerge in 'Countdown City' was that Hank Palace, the man everyone thinks is odd, the man who sometimes struggles to understand other people's behaviour, has a firmer grasp on reality than the people around him. His sister, energetic, defiant, bright, and the only person he really feels connected to, is determined to save the world through the work of some secret cabal. Hank is completely incapable of seeing her efforts as anything other than self-delusion. As the end of the world approaches, it seems that for most of us, self-delusion is what keeps us going. Again, this got me thinking about how far that's true in my day-to-day life.

I bought the final book 'World Of Trouble' when I finished the second one back in 2015 and I found I was unable to read it. I understood that Ben Winters' version of the end of the world wouldn't be an adventure. It would be an entirely different kind of journey and there was too much going on in my own life for me to add in despair and I couldn't imagine an ending that wasn't a hope killer.

So here I am, seven years after reading the first book, finally having finished the trilogy. I'm glad I read it and I'm glad I waited,

Like the rest of the trilogy, it was a strange book that never quite went where I expected it to yet it always felt grounded and real. With only a few weeks to go, Hank Palace leaves behind the community he was offered shelter in at the end of 'Countdown City' and goes to find his sister, who he last saw being flown away on a helicopter on her mysterious and, Hank believes, bogus effort to save the world.

In this book, Hank finally starts to crack under the pressure of the impending end of everything. He becomes obsessed with finding his sister and uncovering the truth behind the organisation that whisked her away from him. He spends large parts of the novel deeply distressed and frustrated at his inability to work the problem, find his sister and solve one last case. Hank knows that he's no longer behaving rationally. That the chances of him finding his sister are slim. That his relentless, manic pursuit of clues may simple be a distraction from the imminence of the death of the world. But that doesn't mean he can stop. it simply makes him more desperate and increases his absolute need to know.

His search takes him to a deserted police station in a small town in Ohio. What he finds there, signs of his sister's presence, strange blood spatter and, eventually, a body does provide him with one last case to solve in the week before the end of the world.

One of the challenges of writing a trilogy is coming up with an ending that has enough punch. Something that justifies the three-book journey to that destination. Ben Winters delivered this perfectly. The book continued to be driven by Hank's obsessive quest to know. People's behaviour continued to get stranger and Hank is no closer to understanding them.

As he works on his puzzle Hank reflects on the people he met along the way, like the young couple he had to rescue because they'd set the zoo animals free and one of them had been chased up a tree by a tiger. Or the people, all wearing the same colour t-shirts who had organised themselves into looting gangs to empty malls of things that they didn't have enough days left to use.

My favourite moment was when he came across an isolated family group who had been shielded from the knowledge of the asteroid by their leader. As he has lunch with them, Hank realises that the strange, now unfamiliar thing he is seeing in their behaviour is the simple happiness that comes from knowing that you have a future. He wonders why he's only able to see that happiness because it has been taken from him.

The closer I got to the end, the more the tension in the book ramped up. The puzzle Hank is trying to solve is difficult, brutal and personal. The answers that he finds pull all of the storylines of the trilogy together but without the sense of triumph that solving a mystery is supposed to bring. Hank now knows what happened and with that knowledge, he can finally let go of his obsession and face the one day he has left.

I won't talk about the puzzle that Hank solves, except to say that it was very cleverly done and highly emotionally charged.

I won't share the ending either, although it burns bright in my memory. It was perfect. Deeply affecting and yet wonderful in its own way. I'll remember it for a long time.

I'm going to bask in the glow of the trilogy for a while and then I'm going to try out Ben Winters' next book 'Underground Airlines'. show less

4.5
The "case", as it were, means even less here - although, somewhat paradoxically, it also matters more. At this point, though, we readers are simply on board the train to the end. Because, let's face it: everybody wants to know what's going to happen. How it will happen. And lunchtime on Wednesday, October 3, comes way sooner than we want it to - but that's the trick of inexorability. The triumph of this trilogy is not so much in the individual crime stories but rather in the profound examination (both by the author, in his characters, and by the author's material, in the reader's mind) of humanity in the face of inescapable doom. What makes us human, what it means to survive and have a purpose - and how to cope, when the end does show more come. A stunning achievement.


More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/06/26/world-of-trouble/
and at TNBBC: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/drew-reviews-world-of-trouble.ht... show less

Spoiler-y.

Phew.
Disaster averted.
No, not the asteroid. The ending.

Toward the end of the middle book in the trilogy, it seemed that the earth might be snatched from the jaws of annihilation by some unlikely measure. Luckily, Winters didn’t wimp out and make a happy ending.

Then again, he kind of did. Not everything works out for Henry in this book, but he does complete the investigation that has consumed him; namely where is sister Nico and can they both meet their ends on better terms than last they met. He does find her, but those terms are left to stand. I felt that Henry finally became the policeman he longed to be in this final book. There’s more investigation, technique and dogged pursuit of clues. Along the way he meets the show more good, the bad and the trippy. It makes for some needed distraction from the grimness that permeates the rest of the story.

I especially liked the construct surrounding the Amish clan he meets. When he and Atlee first clash in the cornfield, I knew what Atlee was up to and didn’t blame him for trying to protect his family’s psyches in what only he knew would be their last days. Better to go out with your worldview intact instead of potentially becoming like all the other unshipped humans running amok. And I was glad about Houdini, too. Poor little mutt. Then again, he’s as innocent as Atlee’s family, so could be he’s not so poor.

Maybe it’s because I read a lot of crime thriller type books, but I suspected Jean/Lily as the real killer right away. I didn’t suspect the reasons why though. Just thought she might have flipped out. The real reason is more sinister and sadly more likely, given the state of humanity and the cruelty and manipulation we’re capable of. I was a little sad to see Cortez go out the way he did. I kind of liked his devious mind. The explanation Winters gave for the miraculous helicopter, Jordan’s internet access and the seemingly wide reach of Nico’s co-conspirators, was satisfactory, too. It blew off the whiff of implausibility that clung to it.

In reading reviews for the previous two books, people complain that Henry is too morose or angry. Well, what do you expect? Did you want some happy-go-lucky nincompoop who clings to denial in the face of reality? Did you want some twerp spouting platitudes about being positive and living life to the fullest? Henry has his illusions, but thankfully they’re not bound up in claptrap and false hope. I thought Henry was drawn well and his attitude seemed right and fitting given the impending doom. Not only that, but the deterioration of society as a whole seemed plausible.

It occurred to me while reading to wonder how Henry’s story got told if the whole world died...some sort of time capsule rescued by future generations of humans? Rescued by our replacements, evolved out of what came after? Aliens? Eh, after a bit, I let it go. show less