Hammond, Warren: KOP
KOP
Writer: Warren Hammond
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 331
I noticed this book last year when it was released in hardcover. With that kind of cover, it's no wonder I noticed it. However, after flipping through the pages and glancing at the blurb, I put it back. I was interested, but no where NEAR enough to get the hardcover. And I kept telling myself that same thing every time I saw the book in the store.
However, when I saw the mass-market paperback a couple of weeks ago, I only hesitated a second before snatching it up. Turns out, my instincts were right-on.
KOP is a science fiction noir: a hard-boiled mystery thriller set on the planet Legarto. Legarto is no innocent world: its population is teeming with poverty and antiquated technology, and there's not a single innocent on the planet, not even our narrator Juno Mozambe (that's a man, BTW), who's a dirty cop. The book tells you this on the freaking backcover blurb, so don't worry, I give nothing away. He's taken off vice in order to work a homicide, and he's stuck with a rookie for a partner. Beautiful girl, of course, who comes from money and actually does have a touch of innocence guiding her.
The story might sound familiar, and let's face it, it IS. But once the ball gets rolling, Hammond unravels a nice, semi-complex plot with detailed world-building and a cast of characters that must constantly make decisions: how bad is bad? And more important, how bad are you willing to be in order to protect what you love?
Now let's just get one thing out of the way: there's no QUESTION this is a debut novel. NO QUESTION. The biggest flag is the voice, the plodding and often punchy first-person narrative that marches along throwing out opinions and details often without much to back it up. Often, the commentary about the world, the politicians, the poor, what-have-you, sound lifted straight from a cynic of our own world, and in the beginning, ESPECIALLY the beginning, this book reads like a mystery story simply set on another planet. Often, the SF is window-dressing, not central to the plot at all.
But then, Hammond gets sneaky: what seems like laziness of world-building becomes rather central to the economy and the plot. The reason the city of Koba is so like our own world is because it's butt-fuck POOR. And poverty, like anywhere else, breeds crime. Now I'm not saying that what Hammond does here is a stroke of genius: it's certainly NOT, but by the end of the book, I'm no longer feeling as though the author took the two genres of mystery and science fiction and just mashed them together. It works, and it works well enough to keep the pages turning, and it works well enough that I like the little details Hammond throws in. It's not the BEST world-building ever, but I really like what Hammond is doing here. That said, I wonder if we'll ever get off Legarto and into the rest of the universe. Right now, all offworlders are lumped together as rich, beautiful, and superior in technological advancement, but I'm curious to see how he'd pull it off. Not to criticize, mind you. I'm doing a similar unbalance of power and technology in my OWN world-building, so it's kind of fun seeing another author do the same thing.
But enough of that.
I'll be honest: the last "official" mystery book that I read was Janet Evanovitch's One for the Money--no, wait, it was Sharyn McCrumb's Zombies of the Gene Pool. Whatever: neither book has the same tone or flavor as this, and I don't READ books with the flavor or tone as this. HOWEVER, that said, I have read samples. I'm intimately familiar with first-person narration, and I know a few mystery writers. So when I say the voice and plot feels familiar, I think that's saying SOMETHING.*** I'd like to make some well-read mystery readers/writers, particularly fans of the noir, read this and tell me just how it stacks up. Morbid curiosity, nothing else. Because as I mentioned above, Hammond does manage to pull me out of the familiar, out of the stereotype, and into interesting character decisions and developments.
In some ways, this book is SF-fluff. It's kind of funny calling such a "manly" book "fluff" (a term usually reserved for romance), but that's what it is. Maybe beach-read is a better term, or airplane-read. Whatever. It reads fast, it has an obvious audience in mind, and it doesn't apologize for what it is. I'd call it "man-fiction," but that's not fair to the book or the author, because I enjoyed the hell out of it. While at times the profanity was a little unnecessary, and I worried like hell Hammond would do the usual falling-in-love-with-your-partner bit, I found myself flipping through the pages like there was no tomorrow. Yes, I cringed at the telling during scenes of panic or pain (detailed via all-caps with words like PAIN!!! FUCK!!! and yes, with explanation marks), but in the end, I was hooked. I didn't care that the only remotely sympathetic character was Maggie (at the start, I thought this should've been HER story, but now I see why it isn't) or that in the end, nobody really wins. Every character has their own sins to bear--even Maggie, at the end--and rather than saving the world, it's pretty much stuffed back down the shitter.
And you know what? I LIKE THAT. There's no easy answers, no happy endings, but just enough resolution and satisfaction that I'm happy with the ending and I'm willing to read forward. But not in hardback (sorry!).
My Rating
Worth the Cash: For the mass-market, not the hardcover. It's not a book for everyone, and as I've already pointed out, it's obviously a debut effort, but I'm hooked enough to snatch up the next paperback when it comes out. There's at least two more books in the works, and I have to say I'm looking forward to them. It's fun in a twisted, sick-bastard kind of way, but there's also a satisfaction watching the characters fight so damn hard for what they believe in, despite a hopeless situation. It's a fast read and worth checking out, especially if you're the mystery/thriller type.
Next up: The Terror by Dan Simmons (yes, I know I said this last time, but it's a LONG BOOK. I needed something fast for my lunch breaks, so I read KOP too!)
*** = Sin City! That's what kept making me think this book was familiar! Not that this book is anything like THAT story, but the cast, the mood, the tone, yeah. Sin City (the movie, not the graphic novels. I've not read the graphic novels).