Black humor is the match that closet idealists strike to keep the real darkness at bay.
"Hollywood Moon" is the third in the series of novels Joseph Wambaugh has set in LAPD's Hollywood station -- and, by far, the best in the sequence. A meticulously realistic re-creation of cops' daily and, more important, inner lives has been a hallmark of this engagingly accomplished writer since he first burst on the literary scene with his 1971 bestseller, "The New Centurions." Another LAPD novel and a stunning work of nonfiction later -- "The Onion Field," second only to Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" as the finest true crime book written in English -- Wambaugh's fiction took a bracing turn into black comedy with "The Choirboys." (One longs to quote its matchless last sentences, but this newspaper's standards prevent it.)
Wambaugh went on to hone that darkly cutting sensibility in a series of what might be termed "comedies of manners with mayhem" set in such carefully observed and skillfully evoked settings as Pasadena's dog show set, San Diego's America's Cup racing scene and Palm Springs' lavish second homes and restricted country clubs. The experience of those books lent his fiction a masterfully confident air when he returned to the Los Angeles Police Department, where he once labored as a detective sergeant, with the first of the Hollywood station novels.
It's not necessary to have read the others to enjoy "Hollywood Moon," but it helps to appreciate the skill with which Wambaugh manages what now amounts to a kind of cinematic ensemble cast of characters -- think John Ford after a bottle of Jameson garnished with crystal meth. "Hollywood" Nate Weiss, the smart cop and disappointed aspiring actor, is back, as is his partner, the dauntingly effective Dana Vaughn, who can't seem to decide whether she finds the small-time bad guys or her male colleagues more exasperating.
Also back for a series of star turns are Flotsam and Jetsam, the two Malibu-based surfer cops who regard police work as a series of dating and practical joke opportunities. Even the Oracle, the station's legendarily jaded and wise sergeant -- who died of a heart attack in an earlier book -- returns in memory and spirit.
The crooks are the best of the series. Dewey and Eunice -- a pair of high-tech scam artists -- are the model for a new kind of con artist, playing as much on technology as on credulity. Malcolm Rojas is as chillingly realistic a sexual predator as you're likely to meet in contemporary crime fiction.
