The Last Town

The conclusion of Crouch’s trilogy of dystopian thrillers (after 2013’s Wayward) requires readers to suspend reason as well as disbelief while following the inhabitants of Wayward Pines, Idaho, who, after spending 1,800 years in a cryogenic deep freeze, represent the last of humanity in the year 3813. The isolated community, conceived and created by David Pilcher, resembles someone’s 1950s smalltown ideal. The ideal ended when, in the previous volume, Sheriff Ethan Burke revealed to the townspeople that Pilcher, Wayward Pines’s self-appointed deity, is the man behind the curtain. Pilcher retaliates by removing the town’s electronic protection and allowing mutated humans known as “abbies,” or aberrations, to attack. While bloody and unevenly matched fights rage between the beleaguered townies and the abbies, Burke attempts to breach Pilcher’s stronghold and end the slaughter. The thin characterizations and repetitive action scenes grate, but may translate more naturally to the small screen in the series’ planned TV adaptation. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (July)