. . . And I feel fine. . . .

I found this book through a book I read last Cannonball – Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which I didn’t really like. BUT – at the end were a few bonus chapters of another book written by the same author. I was totally sucked in, and bought the whole thing.

Hank Palace always wanted to be a police detective, and he recently achieved his goal, which is fantastic. That’s really the only good thing, though. Because a huge asteroid is heading this way. It is 100% certain that it will collide with Earth, and end life as we know it. It’s going to hit October 3rd, and during the course of the book, the characters learn that scientists will figure out where the asteroid will hit (although we don’t get that answer in this book – it’s the first of a trilogy). So how is a cop to do his job at the end of the world? What’s the point of chasing and catching bad guys when we’ll all be dead in less than a year?

Detective Palace keeps doing his job, though, because it’s the right thing to do. He catches a case that looks like a suicide (which is epidemic, given the circumstances), but something doesn’t smell right. He starts looking into the victim’s life, and finds all sorts of possible culprits and motives. The investigation is hampered by declining technology and infrastructure as well as the general apathy of most people involved. But Palace is able to get to the bottom of things, partly because his dogged earnestness encourages people to step outside themselves to help him.

The solution to the mystery isn’t super satisfying, but the story was engrossing and entertaining enough to carry me through to the end, and to ensure that the next two books in the trilogy are in my “read soon” pile.