Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (The Last Policeman Trilogy)

With just 77 days until an asteroid strikes Earth, out-of-work detective Hank Palace takes on a missing-person case in a world where phones, cars, law, and social order are disappearing in the second installment of the Philip K. Dick Award–winning apocalyptic mystery series.

“A genre-defying blend of crime writing and science fiction.”—Alexandra Alter, The New York Times

There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank's days of solving crimes are over...until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband.

Brett Cavatone disappeared without a trace—an easy feat in a world with no phones, no cars, and no way to tell whether someone’s gone “bucket list” or just gone. With society falling to shambles, Hank pieces together what few clues he can, on a search that leads him from a college-campus-turned-anarchist-encampment to a crumbling coastal landscape where anti-immigrant militia fend off “impact zone” refugees.

Countdown City presents another fascinating mystery set on brink of an apocalypse--and once again, Hank Palace confronts questions way beyond "whodunit." What do we as human beings owe to one another? And what does it mean to be civilized when civilization is collapsing all around you?

Ben H. Winters is the New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award–winning, and Philip K. Dick Award–winning author of The Quiet Boy, Golden State, Underground Airlines, the Last Policeman trilogy, and the mash-up novel Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Ben has also worked extensively in television; he was a writer on the FX cult hit Legion as well as Manhunt on Apple TV+, and he is the creator of the CBS drama Tracker. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.