Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of seventeen prior works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Choirboys and The Onion Field. In 2004, he was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in southern California.
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 Reed Business Information.
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.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
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