I was so excited to get the call from the library that Countdown City, book 2 in The Last Policeman trilogy arrived.  This book picks up where The Last Policeman left off, the world is still ending, Detective Hank Palace has been “let go” from the police department, people are off bucket listing, and Nico is still involved with conspiracy theorists.

These books are well written, exciting and contain fantastic black dead-pan humor.  Ex-detective Hank Palace is a man who just “keeps on keeping on”, he is not super hero or a larger than life character, more of  a regular man in extraordinary circumstances.  Hank meets a wide cast of characters as he works his missing person case, each person has their own story and their own way of handling the impending doom.  The reader meets Dr.  Fenton again, in the first books she was performing autopsies, now with the need so great, she works on the living.  Her bedside manner provides some of the humor in the book,  as this excerpt of her conversation with a shooting victim shows:

“As circulation improves over the next couple weeks, you’ll start to get a persistent tingling, and then you’ll need physical therapy to work toward regular functioning.  Then, around early October, a massive object will strike the earth and you will die.”

The mystery is well plotted and believable  with several threads of the plot coming together.  I can’t wait for the final book to come out.