"Darkly funny."—Los Angeles Times
"[W]hat other author could present cops, street people, and career criminals with such deadeye credibility? Only Wambaugh, former street cop and sergeant with the LAPD and author of 18 works of fiction and nonfiction... In his latest, his fourteenth novel since the groundbreaking The New Centurions... Crimes escalate and fun abounds."—Booklist
"Full of glimpses into the workings of low-level tech crime, bestseller Wambaugh's entertaining third "Hollywood station" novel (after Hollywood Crows) provides lots of laughs and gasps along with a few tender sighs... Spare and punchy prose fuels descriptions so on target that readers will feel they are riding shotgun, gazing out on Tinseltown's tawdry landscape."—Publishers Weekly
"[W]hat other author could present cops, street people, and career criminals with such deadeye credibility? Only Wambaugh, former street cop and sergeant with the LAPD and author of 18 works of fiction and nonfiction... In his latest, his fourteenth novel since the groundbreaking The New Centurions... Crimes escalate and fun abounds."
"Darkly funny."
Full of glimpses into the workings of low-level tech crime, bestseller Wambaugh's entertaining third “Hollywood station” novel (after Hollywood Crows) provides lots of laughs and gasps along with a few tender sighs. Trouble ensues after a husband-and-wife team of identity thieves, the weak-willed Dewey Gleason and his domineering mate, Eunice, cross paths with Malcolm Rojas, a creepy teenager with major anger-management issues. The heart of the story, though, comes from the vignettes of life on patrol among the cast of the station cops, including “Hollywood” Nate Weiss, the actor turned cop; Weiss's beautiful partner, Dana Vaughn; and the surfer duo, Flotsam and Jetsam, who at one point engage in a hilarious, extended dialogue of surfer-speak straight off the waves at Zuma. Spare and punchy prose fuels descriptions so on target that readers will feel they are riding shotgun, gazing out on Tinseltown's tawdry landscape. (Dec.)
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
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.
At least 15 characters hit the Los Angeles streets in this book, and because of Joseph Wambaugh's colorful writing and Christian Rummel's amazing narration, all are well differentiated and fun to follow. The diverse cops Rummel nails include a Latina, an aspiring actor, a Lothario, an Asian-American woman, a fresh-faced officer, and a surfer. Villains include a disturbed teen, a frustrated actor-turned-grifter, a husky-voiced hacker, a redneck druggie, and a hip African-American. On one fateful night all their lives intertwine. Wambaugh is at the top of his game in the latest of his recent Hollywood series. He takes the time to develop the characters while keeping the plot moving. Rummel never stumbles, shifting and deftly juggling the many identities. Under a Hollywood moon, it seems, anything can happen. M.B. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine