Hollywood Moon

November 23, 2009
For the final and arguably best entry in his Hollywood trilogy (after "Hollywood Station" and "Hollywood Crows"), Wambaugh takes listeners on a cops-eye ride along the boulevard of broken dreams through all manner of police eccentricities and heroism, brutal violence, gallows humor, romance, marital discord, and a jaw-dropping study of the ins and outs of identity theft. Christian Rummel, his partner on the ride, translates the vivid prose into something resembling an audio play. He's already honed the voices of such characters as detective Hollywood Nate Weiss and the surfer cop team, Flotsam and Jetsam, but they're refined: Nate sounds a little more grounded, the surfers more subtly spacey. Plus there's a cast of new characters to play withcreepy ID thieves; henpecked and delusional Dewey Gleason and his chain-smoking, gravel-voiced wife, Eunice; and the chilling teenage serial rapist and prospective murderer, Malcolm Rojas. Wambaugh sets a swift pace as he drives his cops and criminals toward each other and an inevitable collision, and Rummel has no trouble keeping up, adding his own spin around the novel's hairpin turns. "A Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 28). (Nov.)" .

October 1, 2009
A police procedural coexists with the story of an identity-theft operation in this follow-up to Hollywood Station (2006) and Hollywood Crows (2008).

Some members of the dysfunctional family at Hollywood Station reappear, including surfer dudes Flotsam and Jetsam and Hollywood Nate Weiss, still dreaming of an acting career. We see these cops at roll call and in their patrol cars, working the midwatch. They crack wise, goof off and sometimes actually catch criminals. When a young Marine kills a drag queen, there's a chase and a firefight, the Marine dies and the episode ends with an elaborate, tasteless joke about Brokeback Mountain (par for the course here). The odyssey of middle-aged identity thieves Dewey and Eunice Gleason runs on a parallel track. Despite their mutual hostility, they remain business partners (and married). Hard-as-nails Eunice is the mastermind, toiling at her computers while weak-willed, self-doubting failed actor Dewey sallies forth, using different disguises to recruit street runners for various scams. His lead runners are Jerzy, a dumb, potentially violent meth tweaker, and Tristan, a smart black guy ready to grab a bigger piece of the pie. Dewey's latest recruit is Malcolm Rojas, a young Hispanic with an anger-management problem who stalks older women. Already weakened by Wambaugh's decision not to splice his thieves' shenanigans with a police investigation, the novel suffers further from slow character development and the long setup of the runners' revolt against the Gleasons. At the end of this poorly paced affair, characters fall like dominoes, with four quick kills preceding a return to frat-house humor.

Well below Wambaugh's customary high standard.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2009
With 14 novels to his credit, Wambaugh ("Hollywood Crows") is an acknowledged master of the police procedural. His patented mixture of gritty realism and dark humor emphasizes how stressful police work is, not to mention dangerous. Cops "die" in his novels, and their eccentricities are a way to deal with this. In his third book about Hollywood Station, police work doesn't get any weirder as actor wannabe-turned-cop "Hollywood Nate," LAPD veteran Dana, and surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam (pretty good officers, despite their eccentricities) investigate two cases that might be linked. There isn't a lot of detecting here: more often than not, police and criminals connect almost by accident. But that, somehow, only makes it more real. VERDICT For nonstop action and enjoyable characters, it's hard to beat "Hollywood Moon". Wambaugh's many fans will read this book with unadulterated pleasure. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 8/09.]David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2009
Two surfer dudes, known as Flotsam and Jetsam, who double as cops; a cop who hears the biological clock ticking on his good looks, which hes been trying to bankroll into a movie career for the past 20 years; a posse of opportunists dressed as Batman, Superman, Darth Vader, and SpongeBob, who pose for money outside Graumans Chinese Theatre; criminals who confuse even themselves with the intricacies of their plots. Where would the reader encounter such off-the-wall types except in a Wambaugh romp? And what other author could present cops, street people, and career criminals with such deadeye credibility? Or transpose slang up and out from the drug world into cop speak with absolutely perfect pitch? Only Wambaugh, former street cop and sergeant with the LAPD and author of 18 works of fiction and nonfiction. He keeps doing it, in book after book, as his acknowledgments attest, by listening to the latest from actual cops, D.A.s, and special agents. In his latest, his fourteenth novel since the groundbreaking The New Centurions, the cops at Hollywood Station (most prominently featured are Hollywood Nate Weiss; his gorgeous and disturbing partner, Dana Vaughn; and the crazed duo of Flotsam and Jetsam) are trying to track a thug whose specialty is vicious attacks on women and various street criminals; in the process, the team sniffs out a high-tech scam. Crimes escalate and fun abounds.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)