Hammond, Warren

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Hammond, Warren

PERSONAL:

Married; wife's name Kathy. Education: Graduated from the State University of New York at Albany.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Denver, CO. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and novelist.

WRITINGS:

Kop, Tor (New York, NY), 2007.

Ex-Kop, Tor (New York, NY), 2008.

SIDELIGHTS:

Warren Hammond is a writer and novelist living in Denver, Colorado. A fan of blues and surf music, Hammond is also a connoisseur of classic science fiction and crime noir novels. A frequent traveler, he and his wife, Kathy, regularly travel to exotic and picturesque locations throughout the world.

Kop is Hammond's first science fiction novel, a "solidly constructed, fast-paced SF debut," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. Set almost 800 years in the future, the story unfolds the planet Lagarto, a colony planet once in demand for a special blend of liquor that could only be produced there. Now, a cheap synthetic substitute for the liquor has been created, throwing Lagarto's economy into a rapid downward spiral. While natives of the sweltering planet struggle simply to survive, rich offworlders can come and go as they please, taking advantage of a trade imbalance and exploiting the remaining resources. In this setting, working in the planet's largest city of Koba, aging police officer Juno Mozambe watches the world crumble around him. Jobe is a corrupt cop, susceptible to bribes, but so is every other cop and government official on the planet. Juno desperately fights to hold onto the position that bribery and strong-arm tactics have given him. A shake-up in the local political power structure makes Juno's friend Paul Chang, head of the Koba Office of Police, suspicious that someone is out to replace him. When Juno is teamed up with a new partner, young and beautiful Maggie Orzo, he thinks she might be a plant sent by the new mayor to spy on him and Paul. Soon, however, Maggie and Juno are on the trail of a freakish serial killer. Juno seeks some justice for the murder victims while also trying to keep his own criminal activities concealed. It doesn't take Juno long, however, to realize that his crimes are insignificant compared to some that the people in charge have planned.

"Once we're past the hackneyed setup, Hammond keeps his story crisply paced, doggedly unpredictable, and as bone-crunchingly violent as it needs to be when it needs to be," commented Thomas M. Wagner on the SF Reviews Web site. "Although the story sometimes becomes convoluted, it's a thrillingly dark read," remarked Krista Hutley in a Booklist review. Denver Post critic Fred Cleaver called Kop "an excellent science fiction mystery of a world-weary and corrupt policeman making a final stand as an honest detective." Jackie Cassada, writing in Library Journal, concluded that Hammond's combination of science fiction and detective story "should appeal to fans of noir fiction." A Kirkus Reviews critic summed up the book and Hammond's fiction output this way: "Gritty, tough, sweaty, with a vivid and well-thought-out backdrop, solid, brutal sleuthing, a deeply flawed but worthy hero and a sequel waiting in the wings: a powerful combination."