2018 John W. Campbell Memorial Award (nominee)
THE PEOPLE’S POLICE is the first new novel by Norman Spinrad to be published in the United States since The Druid King (2003).... Spinrad has, in a five-decade career, authored only one sequel to a previous title; his two-dozen other novels are all singletons with no direct relation to one another....
The People’s Police...embraces cynicism and decadence with admirable gusto. Set in a near-future New Orleans in the aftermath of disasters both natural and financial, the plot follows three main characters whose stories gradually intertwine: Jean-Baptiste Lafitte, a loquacious proprietor of taverns and whorehouses whose livelihood is abruptly endangered by the advent of the “Superdollar,” a deflationary spiral that has made fixed mortgages impossible to pay; Martin Luther (“Luke”) Martin, a young cop from the “Alligator Swamp” who becomes a popular hero by spearheading a police strike against home foreclosures; and MaryLou Boudreau (a.k.a. Mama Legba), a street performer who enters into a partnership with voodoo gods that she parlays into a popular cable program, Mama Legba and Her Supernatural Krewe, and eventually — by means too bizarre and improbable to recount — into the governorship of Louisiana.... Eventually....the main characters come into contact, whereupon the tale starts zooming along like one of those flat-bottomed airboats that New Orleans cops use to patrol the swamps....
Genre: Horror
The People’s Police...embraces cynicism and decadence with admirable gusto. Set in a near-future New Orleans in the aftermath of disasters both natural and financial, the plot follows three main characters whose stories gradually intertwine: Jean-Baptiste Lafitte, a loquacious proprietor of taverns and whorehouses whose livelihood is abruptly endangered by the advent of the “Superdollar,” a deflationary spiral that has made fixed mortgages impossible to pay; Martin Luther (“Luke”) Martin, a young cop from the “Alligator Swamp” who becomes a popular hero by spearheading a police strike against home foreclosures; and MaryLou Boudreau (a.k.a. Mama Legba), a street performer who enters into a partnership with voodoo gods that she parlays into a popular cable program, Mama Legba and Her Supernatural Krewe, and eventually — by means too bizarre and improbable to recount — into the governorship of Louisiana.... Eventually....the main characters come into contact, whereupon the tale starts zooming along like one of those flat-bottomed airboats that New Orleans cops use to patrol the swamps....
Genre: Horror
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