Hollywood Moon

Bucking the law of diminishing returns, HOLLYWOOD MOON is the third in Joseph Wambaugh’s series about the LAPD’s Hollywood Station, yet just as strong as its older brothers. For my money, this is the best crime series going.

Once more, the novel begins reading like a freeform account of the men and women in blue, and all the crazy criminals, tweakers and transvestite prostitutes with whom they come into contact. The cops include the surfer partners known as Flotsam and Jetsam; aspiring actor Nate; single mom Dana; the hotter-than-hot Sheila, and her smitten partner, Aaron.

But it’s the bad guys who take center stage in this one. Although introduced slowly, their shenanigans eventually move to the forefront. There’s Malcolm Rojas, a teenage Home Depot employee and virgin who uses his box cutter to transform himself into a serial rapist … only he’s the world’s worst, either unable to achieve an erection or overpowered by his would-be victims. The rage inside him, however, is growing.

Then there’s Dewey Gleason, a middle-aged loser who, along with his miserable shrew of a wife, runs a series of identity-theft scams which require him to don disguises and assume aliases — parts the failed actor in him so hammily relishes. Two of the lowlifes under his cash-only employ include Creole, a dreadlocked African-American, and Jerzy, an obese Polish methhead, both of whom get the feeling there’s something their boss isn’t telling them.

Eventually, the paths of Malcolm and Dewey intersect, making Wambaugh’s tasty recipe that much spicier. Once more, he’s saddled himself with a ridiculous amount of characters, each with a distinct personality, yet he juggles them all like a pro, able to bestow a purpose in plot to all. Although still very much grounded in reality, his seriocomic stew seems a bit more madcap than the other novels — think Elmore Leonard — but grows bittersweet in the end, without upsetting the tonal balance.

Only one scene feels really out of place, in which Flotsam and Jetsam discuss one’s attempted conquest of a woman with post-surgical problems in her butt and breasts. It’s not the nature of the procedures that rings false — this is Hollywood, after all — but the surfers’ lingo. It practically requires footnoted translations.

Wambaugh’s long-ago past as part of the police force again proves indispensable. These officers feel real, and I’m convinced their stories are culled from real-life beat tales that have made their way to the author’s ear. But he has a way of retelling them that makes each installment of the HOLLYWOOD series an absolute pleasure for the entirety of the shift. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HOLLYWOOD CROWS by Joseph Wambaugh
• HOLLYWOOD STATION by Joseph Wambaugh

Related posts:

1. Hollywood Crows
2. Hollywood Station
3. Old Devil Moon
4. Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Street with the Man of Your Dreams
5. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood