In The People’s Police, Norman Spinrad Takes on the Absurdity of Modern Politics

One of his earliest books, The Iron Dream, includes a story-within-the-story that’s ostensibly a popular fantasy work written by Adolf Hitler. That was in 1972. His 2007 novel Osama the Gun, whose protagonist is an Islamic terrorist, wasn’t published in the U.S. for nearly a decade. Many of his books have earned popular and critical acclaim, but given that they qualify him as an equal-opportunity offender, he might still be best loved for his single, classic episode of Star Trek, “The Doomsday Machine.” His new novel The People’s Police takes on easier targets than his most incendiary works, but it lacks none of his incisive wit or dark sense of humor. And what could be more timely than a book about the absurdity of modern American politics?

If you’re going to write a send-up of contemporary American politics, New Orleans is a setting rife with opportunities for absurdity, and tragedy, and tragic absurdity. A tarnished jewel of sin and vice set in the conservative south, a place of enormous racial diversity with a long and tumultuous history, it’s somehow both deeply representative of the broader U.S. and a place like no other.
Spinrad plops us down in the Big Easy at a time that’s approximately now, but also following a major economic crunch everyone calls “The Great Deflation.” (Imagine if the 2008 financial crisis hadn’t abated.) As is so often the case, New Orleans not only isn’t spared, but faces the full force of the economic damage, not to mention an increasingly rampant annual hurricane season. Martin Luther Martin is a cop who came up in the gang-run badlands of the city, narrowly escaping poverty through his career choice and by marrying a woman whose family is well-connected to the local police union.
Life is looking up, until the raft of foreclosures impacting the city turns Martin’s way: not only is he being evicted, he’s been tasked to serve himself notice. This leads him to spearhead a police strike, with one simple demand: no New Orleans police officer will be asked to serve an eviction notice on another officer. This makes him a hero among his fellow cops, but sets the citizens of the city even more against them: his “heroic” act doesn’t seem nearly as impressive to the people still losing their homes at gunpoint.

Martin is inspired to take things a step further, turning the department into a sort of “People’s Police:” no evictions, no pursuit of garden-variety vice or other victimless crimes. Setting the stage for one helluva Mardi Gras. “People’s Police” is a term that’s been used in various ways over recent decades, often to express the lofty goal of a police force that exists on behalf of the people being policed; as often as not winding up a sad euphemism for a group whose methods and means are no better for ostensibly having “the people” in mind. Here, it’s a bit of both. Though popular, the order is maintained as a way to keep increasingly desperate citizens from hounding the cops.
Into this sinner’s paradise comes J.B. Lafitte, the owner of a fancy brothel in dire straits, as well as MaryLou Boudreau, a flashy voodoo priestess who sweeps in to the story and brings elements of fantasy into the political satire. MaryLou is unique among those who’ve been possessed by the loa that roam freely in New Orleans: she’s able to talk to them. Erzuli, a representative of the spirits, makes her a deal: she’ll have fame and fortune as long as she keeps giving the loa free reign. They’re immaterial spirits that need bodies to do the things that they want to do. They’re not generally bad, mostly wanting to dance, drink, and smoke: loas just wanna have fun.
Before long, Martin, Lafitte, and MaryLou (better known as the host of TV’s Mama Legba and Her Supernatureal Krewe) are drawn into the upcoming gubernatorial race. A mush-mouthed Democratic candidate with stong support is looking to avoid agitating conservatives upstate, while a pro-business, law-and-order Republican seems like the sure winner thanks to a plan to restore order to the city—until Mama Legba herself, backed by entire families of loa, decides to jump into the race.
Decades into his career, Spinrad remains fearless in skewering his targets, even as his characters maintain their essential humanity. Though greed is everywhere, he’s much more fascinated with the web of self-interest that keeps us all spinning in place, butting against each other rather than changing the world. His greatest sympathy is not with the strivers, but with those who mostly just want to keep food on the table. In these fraught times, it’s an easy message to get behind, especially in a book that manages to make politics fun again.
The People’s Police is available now.