If you've finished this year's One Book, One Denver selection and are wishing that Dashiell Hammett had set it on a planet far, far away, or if you've ever wondered how James Ellroy's LA Confidential might have turned out if Ellroy grown up on a steady diet of science fiction, local author Warren Hammond's KOP series -- KOP and the just-released Ex-KOP -- will make your day. A gritty, hard-boiled crime saga set on a dismal, backwater planet roughly 700 years in the future, the series centers around a burned-out dirty cop with a shady, brutal past and fuses the best elements of science fiction and crime noir into a seamless and well-imagined whole. "It's more crime than science fiction, but I went through a huge, huge science-fiction phase from age twenty to age thirty," Hammond recalls. "Then my taste changed, and I got really, really into crime. Something struck me then, and I realized that style was something I could do. I think I found my calling with crime-style writing, but I couldn't resist putting some science fiction in there, too."

Join Hammond tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Tattered Cover, 2526 East Colfax Avenue, where he'll sign and read from Ex-KOP. Visit www.warrenhammond.net or www.tatteredcover.com, or call 303-322-7727 for more info.
Mon., Oct. 13, 2008