But hopefully what makes it fresh, even more so, is the level of detail, realistic detail, about what things would really be like, or might conceivably be like, in these terrible final months. Winters: That detective angle is definitely part of it my goal is that The Last Policeman is successful as a mystery qua mystery, even if you take the whole asteroid-coming business out of it. I assume adding in a noir-ish potboiler procedural detective premise was part of the plan to make this new?
Gilsdorf: How do you make an end-of-days armageddon scenario feel fresh? Just taking the movies Deep Impact and Armageddon, it's a genre that's been pretty well traveled.
At some point it occurred to me to give my hero the challenge of solving his case in the midst of some earth-shaking calamity, and from there it was a short trip to the end of the world. The great books of that genre have some levels to them, some resonances beyond the X to Y to Z of clue tracking. I love the classic detective-story model, and have long been interested in the challenge of building a good one. Winters: Oh, well, you know, why does anyone do anything? (Hey, what do you know? That's the theme of the book!) Then you have a very quiet alter-ego as a children's author you wrote the middle grade reader The Secret Life of Ms. In Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, you take Jane Austen's novel and throw in some giant lobsters, octopi, and sea serpents. Android Karenina mashes up steampunk with Russian literature.
Gilsdorf: Your books have taken on a variety of tones and genres.
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