Just Finished Reading: The Last by Hanna Jameson (FP: 2019)

It was annoying, inconvenient even, but what could you do. The fire in the hotels kitchen meant that the conference had to be moved. Short notice meant that they had to take what was on offer, no matter how remote or how far from the nearest airport. At least it was quiet. At breakfast that morning it began with a scream and a crash of cutlery. Everyone looked across the room to see what the problem was. A woman was standing holding her phone, hand across her mouth. She was crying without seeming to notice she was doing so. Other phones starting beeping with Internet alerts and then they all knew – Washington was gone. Seconds later more alerts… London, Rome, San Francisco and then…. Nothing. The Internet was down. No phone service. No news. In the panic that followed some of his colleagues begged Jon to join them as they left for the airport. Jon could only think of his wife Nadia and their two daughters. He’d left them in San Francisco. But San Francisco was gone. When he came to his senses the hotel was all but empty. Around 20 people, including some of the staff, had elected to stay or had nowhere else to go. They still had electricity and the kitchen had a healthy stock of food. For the time being at least they were safe – or at least as safe as you could be in a world where nuclear weapons flew. As the new reality set in and the shock began to wear off the suicides began. First one and then two more. Then calm, waiting for rescue, watching the endless cloud cover, watching the trees die. But they had to do something. They couldn’t just wait for someone to come, wait to die. So they organised. They rationed. They even hunted for deer in the forest. Water was going to be a problem though. They’d need to arrange something with the roof tanks. It was then that they found the child’s body. She’d been there a while. From that day. From the End. But none of the guests would possibly leave a child behind, no matter what the circumstances. Which could mean only one thing – as the world fell apart there was a murderer amongst them.

I’m really only giving a hint about this book. Sure, it’s an end of the world narrative as a group of disparate people try to survive in a post nuclear war world. On the face of it this sounds like yet another killer in an isolated hotel mystery – it’s even described as a post-apocalyptic ‘And Then There Were None’ – but it’s much, much more than that. That’s just the base, the background narrative. What pushes this excellent novel way above the expected account is both the intense claustrophobic structure and the fascinating cast of characters dealing with their own personal end of the world. Jon, the main character who narrates the story via diary entries, starts out as an average deeply flawed everyman just trying to do his best and proves to be much better than that. But my favourite character by far was Tomi (Tomisen Harkaway) the only other American at the hotel who everyone hates because she voted for ‘him’ so is held accountable for the war. Not only is she far more complex and nuanced than people give her credit for she’s also a clear-headed consummate survivor who shakes Jon out of his misery and starts him on the road to recovery and, dare I say it, personal growth. This is an intense book, there’s no getting away from that fact, but it is an excellent gripping read. The character driven narrative is one of the best I’ve come across in years and I could barely put it down. Being the type of book it is there’s death, sex and a fair bit of swearing/drug taking but most of the death takes place ‘off camera’. Almost all of the perspective is from Jon’s point of view but we see other elements of what happened on Day One and later through Jon’s interviews with the rest of the hotel survivors as he investigates the child’s death (almost as something to keep his mind off the end of the world which is an interesting way of constructing things). Highly recommended. This is actually her fourth book. I’ll definitely be checking out her earlier work.