"The Last Policeman": Novel Weighs How New Hampshire Would Handle A Coming Apocalypse

Enlarge image

The Last Policeman cover.

Recently the website BoingBoing recommended a novel called The Last Policeman. It's a murder mystery with a unique twist: it's set six months before a massive asteroid is set to collide with Earth and essentially cause the end of the world.

What was most intriguing for us, though, was where the novel is set. The murder in the book takes place at a fast food restaurant about three blocks from NHPR's studios in Concord.

Ben H. Winters is the author of The Last Policeman. He talks with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson about why he chose the Granite State as the setting for his "pre-apocalyptic" novel, and why his protagonist, Detective Hank Castle, keeps doing his job even at the end of the world.