Former LAPD detective Joseph Wambaugh earned his literary stripes with The Choirboys and The Onion Field. More recently, he’s written a series of police procedurals based on the “new” LAPD: a department whose cops must operate with their hands tied due to restrictions and increased paperwork imposed as a consequence of past abuses. Hollywood Station and Hollywood Crows, the first two books in the new series, were terrific. The latest, Hollywood Moon, falls far short.
As with the other two books focused on the cops working out of Hollywood Station, Moon has one plot at its core, but with short anecdotes about Hollywood and the cops’ lives filling out the pages. The plot involves a couple of flim-flam artists made up of a chain-smoking “coppery blonde with gray roots that she seldom bothered dyeing any more until there was at least an inch showing” and her husband, a washed-up actor whom she has totally emasculated. They work a couple of scams using LA college kids and petty crooks, including one deranged character who addresses his mommy issues by attacking women.
Most of the cops are repeat characters from the two previous books: surfers Flotsam and Jetsam, “Hollywood” Nate Weiss, who is trying to break into movies, and various others. But whereas the anecdotes in the previous books were ripe with black humor, they just fall flat in the latest. Similarly, the cops’ street talk seemed fresh and realistic previously, but clichéd to the point of cringeful here. (I simply don’t believe that surfers have said “Cowabunga” since the late ‘60s.)
Wambaugh is still worth reading, but don’t waste your time with this one.
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