Hollywood Hills: A Novel

Have all his works best at crime writing

Love Wambaughs characters , his one liners ( although it’s funny all the characters have a similar sense of humor) a fun easy read. Always a tragedy inserted along with the laughs. I was in law enforcement in LA & appreciate the LA that once was, where there was a semblance of the rule of law

Wambaugh delivers again! Terrific book, compelling characters (some from previous novels so it's great to keep up with them), great plot with twists (as always). I love ALL the Wambaugh books! This is just another great read! Highly recommend.

To make a long story short, this is a fun read and I recommend it. A lot of times I will recommend an author's best works to a new reader but I'm pleased to say this book is on par with his best and won't be as dated as, say, Choirboys. It is the newest and best of the Hollywood series. You don't have to read the previous books in the Hollywood series to enjoy it because there is no plot overlap at all.Speaking of plot, I found the plot here to be the best of the Hollywood series. Another thing I liked was he cut back a bit on the humor. There's still lots of good lines, but in the past I sometimes thought there were too many. I found some of the humor to be more subtle this time. An example: The watch commander suspects a subordinate of denigrating or allowing denigration of the chief's automated crime tracking program. The commander asks the subordinate about it and the subordinate answers "everyone is on board 100%." Wambaugh's prose makes this a very funny sequence...I laughed out loud. In previous books it seemed like everyone was always making the same kind of witty wisecracks and I got a little tired of it.Sometimes this book reads like true crime, petty crime, Hollywood weird crime. I love it. I just enjoy it immensely. I like to roam and hang out in Hollywood and the setting of the book is right there on some of the same streets. Wambaugh even names the specific streets and intersections. I feel like I'm there at Sunset and Fairfax watching it happen. Maybe you will enjoy this too. One reviewer didn't seem to like it and felt the plot was disjointed (my words) but I could not disagree more. The plot is ingenious, one of my favorites.I became aware of Wambaugh in 1972. I was in 8th grade. New Centurions (I think) was playing at a theater in downtown Pittsburgh. I wanted to see it but it was rated R. That was four decades ago; I was a little boy. Now I'm in my early 50's.Years later in college I started reading his books. I got them all until I ran out and had to wait for a new one to come out each year or two. Eventually he slowed down and I thought he'd quit. I started re-reading his works in 1998 and bought used hardcovers of all his books. I'm a true fan. I only three left to re-read (Echos, Floaters, Blooding) before I will have read them all twice.So I was VERY happy when he started to write fiction again. I love Hollywood (and so does he obviously) and so it was a bonus that he set the books there. I hope the Hollywood series continues.

Famed author and former LAPD detective Joseph Wambaugh provides a follow-up to his hilarious cast of characters in *HOLLYWOOD MOON* without missing a beat. The transition is smooth as silk as the reader is once again entrenched in the daily lives of cops assigned to the Hollywood Station such as actor wannabe "Hollywood Nate" Weiss... "Surfer-Dudes" Flotsam and Jetsam... "Snuffy" Salcedo... "Gypsy"... Sergeant Murillo... "Compassionate" Charlie Gilford... and a cast of "thousands". Engrained like a mantra within every cop in the station are the words of the late great Oracle: "DOING GOOD POLICE WORK IS THE MOST FUN YOU'LL EVER HAVE IN YOUR ENTIRE LIVES." And if that cheerful hymn doesn't seem to fit an insane, screwed up situation... then the second most relied upon exhortation bellowed out by the troops is "HEY! THIS IS **FREAKIN** HOLLYWOOD!"In the midst of the normal crazy-character-driven-Hollywood-shenanigans... which includes among other things... brawls between lowlifes dressed up as characters such as... Marilyn Monroe... Superman... and Catwoman... on Hollywood Boulevard... along with a monster of an ex-con wired on drugs while watching porn with a mechanical device attached to his manhood... in a Goth's house in which he has been asked to leave... yet refuses... which leads to half the police department being involved in a donnybrook that results in multiple injuries and hospitalization. All this craziness isn't even the main plot. The main plot involves a copy and replace scam of valuable art pieces which originally only involved an elderly art gallery owner, *Nigel Wickland*... and an ex-con now house sitter *Raleigh L. Dibble*. (How's that for two great names?) Before you know it two young druggies Jonas Claymore and his girlfriend Megan Burke are in the middle of everything... and you don't know which criminal is going to double deal who. Perhaps Wambaugh's best literary character nuances lie in the descriptive prose of the wretched drug culture with such gems as: "BEATLE SHOWED TEETH LIKE JAGGED LICORICE DROPS"... and "THE TWEAKER SHOWED HIM EYES AS EMPTY AS A HAUNTED HOUSE."... And in death... "HE WENT DOWN ON HIS BACK, EYES OPEN, AND THEY NEVER CLOSED AGAIN."A great example of the author's rapier literary humorous descriptive power is when he describes a defense attorney who "SEEMED TO BELIEVE EVERY WORD THAT HIS SOBBING CLIENT TOLD HIM. A DETECTIVE SAID OF THE LAWYER, "HE'S THE KIND OF GUY WHO GOES TO A STRIP CLUB AND BELIEVES THAT THE LAP DANCER REALLY LOVES HIM."If you're familiar with the stylistic flow of the Academy Award winning movie *CRASH* and the way all seemingly unrelated situations eventually intersected, that's the artistic concept of *HOLLYWOOD HILLS*.

Great

Really fantastic writer takes you into That story but you really can't for see the end.

Excellent read. All of the books by Joseph Wambaugh are well worth reading. Enjoyed the entire book. Can't wait for more

I read Wambough books more than once. I leave the books in my vacation site in South India; on my returning visits I enjoy reading them again.