THE LAST DETECTIVE by Brian Cohn @briancohnMD #RBRT

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
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How I discovered this book: It was submitted to Rosie Amber's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

Before the alien invasion, Adrian Grace was a cop.  Then the 'slicks' arrived, and their word is law.  Two years later, Adrian is ekeing out a dreary existence in a motel, with his family far away in Boston.  A group of the city dwellers work for the Authority, and police the population according to the rules of the slicks.  Food is short, there is little fuel, and life is one of darkness and danger, with the Authority herding chosen people off to labour camps from which nobody ever returns.  But there is revolution in the air.

Then Grace is asked to solve the murder of one of the slicks.  In an action-packed plot taking place over a period of just a few days, he is drawn into a labyrinth of corruption, lies, dubious loyalties and misplaced assumptions about those with whom he comes into contact.

Brian Cohn has created a compelling dystopian world, with lots of evocative detail and ponderings on life, the universe and everything.  Grace makes for a likeable and interesting first person narrative, in turn depressive, philosophical, cynical and dryly humorous; there are some amusing touches, such as the daily game of Russian roulette with his food - the tins are not labelled.  He always hopes it won't be dog food.  Sometimes it is.

I did enjoy this book, and love Cohn's writing style, but I wished for a little more rounding out of the circumstances ~ we are taken from the day of the alien landing (in the prologue), to two years later, only ever seeing hints about what happened in between.  I wanted to know how the slicks took over, who they were, why they arrived, how the society broke down.  And what happened in the labour camps.  The darkness of the city is illustrated beautifully, but as the novel concentrates almost solely on the situation in which Grace finds himself, I was left with lots of unanswered questions.

To sum up: it worked well as detective/mystery/conspiracy novel, less so as a sci-fi/post apocalyptic, which was the aspect that attracted me.  I'd definitely read something else by this author, though.