with Kurt Kamm
We are delighted to welcome novelist Kurt Kamm to Omnimystery News today.
Kurt's new firefighter mystery thriller is Hazardous Material (MCM Publishing, May 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats).
We asked Kurt how important setting is to his books, and he responded by telling us about "Livin' Large in Lancaster".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Kurt Kamm
The "setting" in a novel can be defined as the background and environment, the place, the circumstances in which a narrative set. My newest firefighter mystery, Hazardous Material, tells the story of Bucky Dawson, a HazMat Specialist with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, and the setting is Lancaster, CA.
In the course of Hazardous Material, my damaged hero never strays more than a few miles from his home, and yet he:
• Watches his sister blown apart in a meth-lab explosion;
• Is kidnapped, and left for dead in the Mojave Desert;
• Nearly drowns in a flash flood;
• Battles a nomad chapter of the Vagos outlaw motorcycle gang;
• Responds to the fiery crash of a top-secret fighter jet at a high-security, classified U.S. aerospace research facility;
• Confronts a brilliant aerospace scientist who lives on a runway in an air conditioned 747;
• Participates in a drone search for methamphetamine labs;
And last but not least …
• Solves the mysterious deaths of endangered desert tortoises at Edwards Air Force Base.
Now, you may ask, how can Bucky do all this without ranging far and wide? It turns out that he is attached to HazMat Task Force 103, which is based in Lancaster, California. A high desert city on the western edge of the Mojave, 70 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
What a perfect location — I was able to maintain my reputation for realism and accuracy and still have a fascinating location for the setting of Bucky's adventures. Lancaster is in an area populated with criminals, meth labs and outlaw motorcycle gangs, AND some of the smartest people in the world, actual rocket scientists working nearby at Edwards Air Force Base, NASA, and at dozens of top-secret aerospace facilities.
On his way to work one morning, Bucky looked at the gang graffiti scrawled on signs and walls across the city. His hometown had changed so much that he hardly recognized it. When he was growing up, Lancaster was a nice, safe, middle-class city. Now it was a ghetto of marginal people, lifted from the inner city and spilled out onto the high desert. The transformation began when the state created "affordable housing" in the Antelope Valley and filled Lancaster with low-income subdivisions. Later, a prison opened and then Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — built a detention center to hold criminals awaiting deportation. Lancaster became the scrapheap for all the things no one wanted in their own towns. Bucky's childhood community was now home to Crips, Bloods, and other gang members, their friends and relations. At the same time the gangs were moving in, the methamphetamine craze attracted bikers, Mexican illegals, drug dealers and meth freaks. The empty spaces of the high desert became a magnet for anyone
who wanted to be a meth chef. Crime became rampant and decent people were afraid to go out after dark.
Photo provided courtesy of
Kurt Kamm
But wait, while the inner city of Lancaster deteriorated, incredible things were happening on the surrounding Mojave Desert and in the airspace above it. As Bucky arrives at work, he hears the roar of a jet engine, and looks up to see a low-flying aircraft. None of the men inside the station even bothered to come out to see the flyover. Everyone in Lancaster was accustomed to seeing strange aircraft thundering overhead at low altitude, landing and taking off from Plant 42. As long as Bucky could remember, the Lancaster-Palmdale area had produced some of America's most advanced aircraft. A few miles beyond Plant 42 was Plant 51, better known as the famous Lockheed Skunk Works. The CIA tested Predator Drones nearby at the El Mirage Flight Test Facility and the West Coast home of the Space Shuttle was a few miles north, at Edwards Air Force Base. It was common knowledge that a large part of America's billion-dollar "black" Air Force and space defense projects went on in the Antelope Valley. Bucky often wondered about the disconnect. How could Lancaster be such a wasteland when the facilities around it spent huge amounts of money and were filled with real rocket scientists?
Lancaster is unique. The vast, empty desert attracts both criminal low-lifes and aerospace defense engineers, both seeking the same thing — the privacy that the limitless open space can offer.
I had fun writing Hazardous Material. I responded to a HazMat spill of thousands of gallons of used cooking grease. I went to a biker bar in the middle of the desert. I saw the Space Shuttle at Edwards AFB before it was retired. I tried to drive past the security perimeter at Plant 42 and was nearly arrested by the Federal Police. I helped rescue a very large desert lizard.
Who says writers don't have fun?
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Malibu resident Kurt Kamm has used his contact with CalFire, Los Angeles County Fire Department, Ventura County Fire Department and the ATF, as well as his experience in several devastating local wildfires, to write fact-based firefighter mystery novels. He has attended classes at El Camino Fire Academy and trained in wildland firefighting, arson investigation and hazardous materials response. He is also a graduate of the ATF Citizen's Academy. He is currently riding with Los Angeles County Fire Department's famed Urban Search & Rescue Task Force 2/USA-2, and is working on a USAR mystery, Confined Space.
One of the Malibu fires, the 60 mile-per-hour Santa Ana wind-driven Canyon Fire, burned to his front door and destroyed the homes of several neighbors. Kamm said the lessons he learned from the County Fire Department while writing his first book helped him save his home.
Each of his firefighter mysteries features a firefighter in a particular discipline (wildland, arson investigation, paramedic, hazardous material response, and search and rescue).
A graduate of Brown University and Columbia Law School, Kamm was previously a financial executive and semi-professional bicycle racer. He was also Chairman of the UCLA/Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Foundation and is a supporter of the Wildland Firefighter Foundation.
For further information on Kurt Kamm visit his first responder/author website KurtKamm.com.
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Hazardous Material
Kurt Kamm
A Firefighter Mystery
Bucky Dawson is a HazMat Specialist with Los Angeles County Fire Department HazMat Task Force 129. His station is in Lancaster, CA — an area populated with meth labs and outlaw motorcycle gangs, as well as Edwards AFB, NASA, and top-secret aerospace facilities.
One night, Task Force 103 is called out to support a Sheriff's raid on a meth lab in the Mojave Desert. In the darkness, Bucky sees his sister at the door of a double-wide trailer before it explodes.
Bucky's life is in chaos. He is divorced, lonely and struggling with a painkiller addiction. His Battalion Chief tells him to stop using the pills. Will Bucky's promising career come to an end? Will motorcycle thugs prevent him from discovering the secret from his sister's past? Why does the Sheriff's use of a military drone to search for a meth lab lead Bucky into a deadly confrontation with a brilliant aerospace scientist?
Can Bucky survive the challenges in his life?
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