I've reduced the prices for THE PEOPLE'S POLICE as low as Amazon allows--$6.80 for the paperback, $2.99 for the ebook . I'm doing this because I believe that it's important that this novel be read as widely as possible right now even though I'll be losing money doing this. Because the title is not ironic. Because this novel bridges gaps--between cops and people of color, between Dixie and Yankeeland, between Christianity and Voodoo.

                

                  Reviews of THE PEOPLE'S POLICE

Tom Shippey on the Best New Science Fiction THE PEOPLE'S POLICE in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Norman Spinrad's novel imagines much wilder Mardi Gras and with it the idea of the "People's Police of New Orleans": cops looking the other way on minor crime, especially vice.

  

                            By TOM SHIPPEY

The big event in our near future, warns Norman Spinrad in "The People's Police", will be the Great Deflation. The dollar will surge, prices and wages will fall. Who suffers in that scenario? Everyone with a mortgage. Americans end up like Icelanders not so long ago, saddled with debts they can't pay with now-deflated incomes. The next stage is foreclosures and evictions.

In sadly shrunken New Orleans, Officer Martin Luther Martin is given an eviction notice to enforce--with his own name on it. He goes to Big Joe, his union rep, and they pass a resolution saying no cop will evict any other. But why stop there?

So far the sci-fi content of Mr. Spinrad's story has been low, but this is New Orleans, and voodoo takes a hand. The catalyst is MaryLou Boudreau, a street dancer who finds herself possessed by the loa, or spirit, of the voodoo deity Erzuli. It does wonders for her dancing, but it also draws the loas into human politics.

They want to see the good times roll, which they enjoy by possessing human "horses." So they lobby for a wilder Mardi Gras, and with it the idea of the "People's Police of New Orleans": cops looking the other way on minor crime, especially vice. In exchange the loas agree to steer the storms of Hurricane Season away from the city.

Up in Louisiana's Bible Belt, it looks like the Big Easy not only became the Big Sleazy but actually made a pact with Satan. How will that play in state politics? Mr. Spinrad keeps the unintended consequences rolling, often hilariously.

Maybe someone should tell him, though, that reneging on your debts is not a victimless crime. Mr. Spinrad would reply--in a voice of thunder--that seducing people into debt isn't a crime at all, but it sure creates victims. Especially in a place like New Orleans, which, as he puts it with characteristic slangy delicacy, is barely holding on to the edge of the toilet bowl as is.

No one could ever call Mr. Spinrad moderate, but over the decades he has shown himself a hard guy to argue with. And devastatingly funny as well.

"A voice of thunder...No one could ever call Mr. Spinrad moderate, but over the decades he has shown himself a hard guy to argue with. And devastatingly funny as well." ―The Wall Street Journal

“Spinrad keeps the action swift and raises some provocative issues of police-community relations along the way.” ―Chicago Tribune

“When it comes to raw, on-the-edge science fiction, Norman Spinrad’s The People’s Police is the real thing!” ―Amazing Stories

“An incisive satire that conveys the special circumstances of New Orleans in today’s America, with a clever twist of voodoo magic and humor.” ―Booklist

"With a sympathetic eye for all human foibles and aspirations, Spinrad, employing the same sharp satiric scalpel used by Tom Wolfe at his best, delivers parables and parodies of our uncivil civic sphere." ―Locus

“The People's Police is bound to rub some readers the wrong way as well. Then again, it wouldn't be a good satire if it didn't.”―Rob Weber, Val's Random Comments

Don’t expect conventional Science Fiction but if you want to read a slice of life, this is a good example to try.”―SF Crowsnest

“Spinrad is a philosophic game changer.”―Pick of the Literate

"This is vintage Spinrad, wild and wacky.”―Robert McGrath

“Two hundred years ago the Marquis de Sade imagined a new kind of utopia, in which liberty, equality, and fraternity had been achieved through sexual and moral mayhem. Norman Spinrad has updated Sade's vision (minus the sadism) . . . The People's Police is a big, Fat-Tuesday carnival of a book.” ―Paul Park, author of All Those Vanished Engines

“Norman Spinrad takes on Louisiana politics, bare-knuckle persuasion, and some Big Easy voodoo in The People’s Police. This is a terrific take on a near-future New Orleans where the political climate is as warmed as the weather as the working class takes on the political elite.” ―Rick Wilber author of Alien Morning

Nevertheless, despite reviews like this, THE PEOPLE'S POLICE bombed when it was published in hardcover by Tor with, despite my desperate protests, a cover which I knew would kill it the moment I saw it, a cover which falsely presented it as the exact opposite story, spirit, and political hope that was inside.    


Nor would Tor publish a trade paperback edition to remedy what they had done.  I had to self-publish it all by myself.  And Tor even effectively blocked even that by selling their remaining hardcovers at a price lower than that of my paperback.


So now I am offering both the trade paperback and the ebook at the lowest possible price that Amazon will allow.  Because the widening gaps between America's tribes demand that I at least do what I can to bridge them.  

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