{"id":10876,"date":"2025-07-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10876"},"modified":"2025-06-30T21:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T01:23:13","slug":"lloyd-mcneils-last-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/01\/lloyd-mcneils-last-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"Lloyd McNeil&#8217;s Last Ride."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Will Leitch\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780063238565\">Lloyd McNeil\u2019s Last Ride<\/a><\/em> is the heart-warming story of a police officer and divorced dad of an 11-year-old son who discovers he has terminal brain cancer and decides to die on the job so his son can get more cash in death benefits. It\u2019s definitely the most enjoyable book you\u2019ll read about dying of glioblastoma this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Disclaimer: Will\u2019s a friend \u2013 someone I\u2019ve actually spent time with on multiple occasions \u2013 so there\u2019s just no way I was going to be objective about this book. If I had disliked it, I just wouldn\u2019t mention it at all, so bear in mind that this is one time you can actually accuse me of bias and be correct.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lloyd is a cop in Atlanta, the son of a decorated, hard-nosed, military-minded cop who was a sort of legend in the force himself until he died of a heart attack, possibly hastened by the case of a serial killer that he couldn\u2019t solve. He learns at the very start of the book that his headaches are caused by an aggressive type of brain tumor called a glioblastoma that will kill him in a matter of months, and do so in ugly fashion as he starts to experience memory loss, extreme mood swings, and pain in his head he describes as \u201clightning bolts.\u201d He doesn\u2019t tell anyone at all about the diagnosis \u2013 not his son Bishop, his partner Anderson, his boss, his ex-wife, nobody but his doctor. He realizes that his life insurance policy isn\u2019t going to do much for his son, paying for about a year of college if they\u2019re lucky, and realizes that there are large payouts coming to any officer who dies in the line of duty, so he decides to find a way to do just that, only to learn that he\u2019s a pretty good cop and not that good at the dying part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"book\" data-affiliate-id=\"2960\" data-sku=\"9780063238565\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>Lloyd\u2019s letters to his son, which he calls his ten edicts, are interspersed throughout the narrative and lend some gravity to the proceedings, which otherwise are quite jovial for a story about a guy with a time bomb in his brain and a gun at his hip. (To say nothing of his car, which is a weapon in its own right when Lloyd\u2019s behind the wheel.) Those poignant interludes are an accurate reminder of every parent\u2019s nightmare \u2013 that you won\u2019t be there when your kid grows up to experience all of the big moments, to tell him how to change a tire or ask someone on a date, to answer the phone (or a text) when something\u2019s wrong and they need their mom or their dad. The real genius of the book is that those moments aren\u2019t sappy or maudlin, which they could so easily be. They read as honest and clear, probably clearer than any of us could really be if we sat down and thought too hard about what writing that kind of letters really meant, and as a result they hit some big emotional notes without dragging down what is otherwise a fast-paced novel with some great action sequences once Lloyd decides he has a literal death wish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would still rank Will\u2019s first novel, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780063073050\">How Lucky<\/a><\/em>, as my favorite of the three, because I think its protagonist, Daniel, is such an incredible, compelling character, and I love the way the tension builds in that story. That\u2019s not a knock on <em>Lloyd McNeil\u2019s Last Ride<\/em>, as they\u2019re different books with clearly different goals. There are even nods in this book to Will\u2019s second book, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780063238527\">The Time Has Come<\/a><\/em>, that I won\u2019t spoil, and a few other Easter eggs scattered here and there. I\u2019d say <em>Lloyd McNeil\u2019s Last Ride<\/em> is his most earnest book, but I feel like that word has morphed into a backhanded insult, like a pat on the head for a writer who\u2019s mailed in the emotional stuff in most of their previous works. It\u2019s very thoughtful, getting the details right in the important ways, and even in more trivial ways, like details of what an Atlanta cop\u2019s daily routine might be like, that most readers wouldn\u2019t even notice. (I only realized it after reading the acknowledgements.) It\u2019s a novel with a big heart that earns your response through its honesty, with a strong main character and some levity to get you past the fact that the main character is staring death in the face from page one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next up: I actually finished Rita Bullwinkel\u2019s gimmicky, Pulitzer-finalist novel <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780593654101\">Headshot<\/a><\/em> last week and am reading Masashi Matsuie\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9781635425178\">The Summer House<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will Leitch\u2019s Lloyd McNeil\u2019s Last Ride is the heart-warming story of a police officer and divorced dad of an 11-year-old son who discovers he has terminal brain cancer and decides to die on the job so his son can get more cash in death benefits. It\u2019s definitely the most enjoyable book you\u2019ll read about dying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,1358,684,610,161],"class_list":["post-10876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-literature","tag-american-novels","tag-contemporary-novels","tag-dark-comedy","tag-highly-recommended","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10877,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions\/10877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}