Hollywood Moon (Hollywood Station Series #3) »

Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of 18 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.

There's a saying at Hollywood Station that the full moon brings out the beast—rather than the best—in the precinct's citizens. One moonlit night, veteran officers Dana Vaughn and "Hollywood" Nate Weiss get a call about a prowler who's been brutally attacking women. Meanwhile, a pair of cops with the surfer sobriquets Flotsam and Jetsam are on the lookout for a smooth-talking player in dreads and a crazy-eyed, tattooed biker. But something bigger, more high-tech, and much more deadly is about to go down. After a dizzying series of twists, turns, and chases, the cops discover that they've stumbled upon a complex web of crime where even the criminals aren't sure who's conning whom. And for some of the men and women in blue, public duty will exact the heaviest of tolls.

Publishers Weekly

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.)