cover image Hollywood Moon

Hollywood Moon

Joseph Wambaugh, . . Little, Brown, $26.99 (344pp) ISBN 978-0-316-04518-6

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.)