Happy Policeman

Patricia Anthony

Harcourt Brace, 1994 - Fiction - 282 pages

In the small Texas town of Coomey, the Torku deliver VCRs. Clothes. Gasoline. Even Twinkies and Diet Dr Pepper. It began six years ago, on Bomb Day, when the aliens put up the Line to block out the rest of the world. On all the radio bands there is nothing now but static, and beyond the glowing paisley barrier there may be only a radioactive waste. Yet in Coomey life goes on quietly. Until Loretta Harper, the pudgy Mary Kay rep and perennial Homemaker of the Month, is found dead in the woods. It's the first murder in six years, and police chief DeWitt Dawson, with a curse, starts his investigation. Did the Torku kill her? Or was it Foster, the town banker turned flower child? Janet - yes, even Janet, the police chief's own wife - may be involved. Both lyrical and humorous, Happy Policeman is a story of everyday people trapped in an existential test tube. A story of duty and rebellion. And adultery. While aliens watch - and wait - to see if DeWitt will learn the truth about time, responsibility, and universes that leak.

About the author

Patricia Anthony (born 3 January 1947) is an American science fiction and Slipstream author. Anthony published her first science fiction novel in 1992 with Cold Allies, about the arrival of extraterrestrials in the midst of a 21st Century Third World War. This was followed by Brother Termite, Conscience of the Beagle, The Happy Policeman, Cradle of Splendor, and God's Fires, each of which combined science fiction plots with other genres in unconventional ways. Several of her short-fiction works were republished in the 1998 collection Eating Memories.Anthony's best-known and most critically acclaimed work is probably 1993's Brother Termite, a tale of political intrigue told from the perspective of the leader of extraterrestrials who have occupied the United States. James Cameron acquired the movie rights to Brother Termite and John Sayles wrote a script, but the movie has not been produced.Following her initial success, Anthony taught creative writing at Southern Methodist University for three years, and as her career progressed she moved farther away from the traditional boundaries of the science fiction genre. Her 1998 novel Flanders -- the highly metaphysical story of an American sharpshooter in World War I -- represented a clean break with her science fiction past and her final outing with Ace Books. It was a critical, if not commercial, success.After the publication of Flanders, Anthony ceased writing science fiction to work as a screenwriter, though none of her scripts have been green-lighted. Anthony completed a new novel in 2006, but it remains unpublished.Anthony lived in Brazil during the 1970s and later drew upon that experience for Cradle of Splendor.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Happy Policeman
• Author: Patricia Anthony
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace, 1994
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 4, 2008
• ISBN: 0151384789, 9780151384785
• Length: 282 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Humorous / General; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General; Fiction / Science Fiction / General; Fiction / Southern