THE PEOPLE'S POLICE Author:Norman Spinrad 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 ... more »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....« less