Hollywood Moon

I recently read "Hollywood Moon" by Joseph Wambaugh. Joseph Wambaugh is a former Los Angeles cop who has written a number of books (fiction and nonfiction) mostly about Southern California law enforcement. This is his latest book, a novel about cops working in Hollywood. Although it is the third in a series it is largely independent.

I found the book to be a somewhat uneasy mixture. Apparently Wambaugh still knows a lot of cops and they tell him stories, some of which he has incorporated into the book. Several of these stories are fairly amusing but they are a bit disconnected from the rest of the book. The remainder of the book is a fairly routine police procedural where a number of threads come together at the end. The ending was fairly grim and a reminder that police work is often not all that funny.

I didn't think this book was as successful as some of Wambaugh's other efforts such as "The Secrets of Harry Bright". Perhaps noteworthy is that the descriptions of cops griping about having to obey the law did produce in me some unexpected sympathy for liberal federal judges.