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Former LAPD detective-sergeant and best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh is a member of group so elite you can count them on one hand. The author of The Onion Field, a book many consider the best police novel ever written, Joe is one writer of a select few who knows how to bring the colorful life of a street cop to the written page. His latest offering, sure to have fans missing sleep as they try in vein to put down, is Hollywood Moon. There's rumored to be a saying at the Hollywood station that the full moon brings out the beast-rather than the best-in the precinct's citizens. Fittingly Hollywood Moon opens on a moonlit night as veteran Officer Dana Vaughn and "Hollywood" Nate Weiss, a struggling-actor-turned cop, get a call about a young man who's been attacking women.
Meanwhile, two surfer cops known as Flotsam and Jetsam keep bumping into an odd, suspicious duo-a smooth-talking player in dreads and a crazy-eyed, tattooed biker. No one suspects that all three of these dubious characters might be involved in something bigger, more high-tech, and way more illegal. After a dizzying series of twists, turns, and chases, the cops will find they've stumbled upon a complex web of crime where even the criminals aren't sure who's conning whom.
Once again, Joe Wambaugh gets inside the hearts and minds of the cops whose jobs have them constantly on the brink of danger. Heart-wrenching, exhilarating, and laugh-out-loud funny, Hollywood Moon is his most thrilling and deeply affecting ride yet through the singular streets of Los Angeles; a book the LA Times calls, "Darkly funny." "Hollywood Moon is Joseph Wambaugh's best book yet," says Stephen King. "It is full of hilarious anecdotes that ring absolutely true. The "through-story" about the Odd Couple computer thieves and the crazed stalker is especially strong. Most of all, I was deeply moved by the story of Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. Re-encountering Nate and the surfer dudes and Compassionate Charley is like coming back to crazy but wonderful old friends.
This book also made me eager to find a midget. And bowl with him." T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Renegades, says Hollywood Moon has everything he loves about Joseph Wambaugh-it's funny, then surprising, then suddenly shocking. "This third installment in his Hollywood series is his best," Parker says. "The master of the police story just keeps getting better and better." "What other author could present cops, street people, and career criminals with such deadeye credibility?" asks the reviewer in the journal, Booklist? "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. "Wambaugh's entertaining third "Hollywood Station" novel (after Hollywood Crows) provides lots of laughs and gasps along with a few tender sighs," gushes Publisher's Weekly. "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."
Keeping it real "Thirty years ago I had used up my own police experiences in the writing of my first three novels," Wambaugh says, "so I was forced to do research in order to collect fresh anecdotes and ideas for my fiction. The most sensible approach and one that I thought would work, was to invite groups of police officers to dinner meetings at good restaurants where they could dine and drink and ventilate. "I learned almost at once that three or four was about the right number at each dine-and-drinks session.
"More than that and they might talk to their closest dinner partner, and I would miss a lot of the conversation. Fewer than that and the shyer ones might get stage fright, not finding the safety in numbers that two or three colleagues provided. After only a few sessions I also learned that I must segregate by gender. When I mixed male and female cops at these meetings, the men often got a bit macho after a few drinks, hoping to impress the women. Then the women would resent the machismo pose and shut down. Sort of a playground syndrome.
"In general, the women were freer talkers, more willing to reveal powerful emotions. And of course, the communication of powerful emotion is what story telling is all about. And the women were cheaper dates. The men needed about two-and-a-half drinks to really cook, but the women only needed to smell the cork to catch fire. Moreover, at the end of our chats, the women never failed to hug me - a definite bonus. "I also learned very quickly that I should curtail my detective instincts and not interrogate.
"Rather, I should just let them talk about anything they wished. This way, things might emerge that they really hadn't intended to share--and that is definitely the stuff that novels are made of. For certain, I had to leave any recording devices at home. Cops are super suspicious by nature, and though they will hold still for note taking (information they can deny if it later seems inaccurate or embarrassing), they will clam up if they see a recording device.
"That made for a lot of food stains on my shirts when I had to suddenly drop my fork and grab my pen to write down something juicy. "The acknowledgment page for Hollywood Station lists fifty-four coppers, male and female, with whom I visited in these dine-and-drink sessions. Hollywood Crows lists fifty-seven, Hollywood Moon over 60. I shall be forever grateful that they share with me. Without them my writing would not exist and I'd probably have ended up an old retired copper with a part-time job catching shoplifters at Wal-Mart." Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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