'Hollywood Moon' by Joseph Wambaugh

One of the things that sets Wambaugh's cops and crooks apart from those in so many other mysteries and police procedurals is that he fixes both firmly in the same realistic social context. There, they share a kind of moral vertigo -- a sense of events and feelings spinning out of control and toward disintegration. Things, however, never settle into a facile -- which is to say, cynical -- moral equivalency. Cops and crooks may inhabit the same twisting streets and even share a common fondness for excitement and the well-shaved corner. The difference is that the cops, even in disillusion, retain something decent to which they can cling, something unspoken about their vocation that anchors them and prevents them from being swept into the vortex.

That constant is the spine that runs through "Hollywood Moon," as it has through all Wambaugh's LAPD novels. It's what allows you to find the black humor genuinely funny and to experience these masterful novels as something more than entertainment.

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timothy.rutten@latimes.com