Trailer Park Tuesday: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

I was intrigued by Ben H. Winters' new novel The Last Policeman long before I saw this video.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for doomsday fiction (Apoca-lit?), but the premise behind The Last Policeman sure does tickle my fancy: as a meteor hurtles toward Earth and residents resignedly prepare to die, a policeman named Hank Palace continues to pound the pavement in his gumshoes.  The novel and its trailer ask, "What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway?"  As the publisher's plot synopsis tells us, Hank is "investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares."  I first heard about Winters when he published those literary classic mashups Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina.  While still smooshing up a couple of different genres, The Last Policeman appears to be a more straightforward offering.  Even though it's a little light on describing plot, the book trailer does a good job of creating atmosphere.  While I'm not a huge fan of "sentences recited by a succession of talking heads," I think the multi-tongue element works okay here.  It shows that we're all in this together and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE WHEN THE METEOR HITS.