What We're Reading

REVIEW
Still puzzling over Hollywood Moon.

Er...

No, still puzzling. I'm caught between thinking this is The Wire-lite with semi-indecipherable cop-speak dragging the limeys through the authentic dark side of Hollywood.

Or, whether this is just out-there fluff scraped from the Vaseline-smeared lens of a David Lynch movie.

Wambaugh was an LAPD cop for 14 years and, boy, he misses the life. He dresses up bar-room anecdotes of life on the streets to add colour to his tale and you can see a tear course down his face as he types his novel while all the time hankering to be still out there, among the weirdos, drop-outs, no-goods, sleazeballs, five-and-dime angels and hardball bluesmen.

Here, his mix of the good, the bad and the ugly go in pursuit of a young man whose been attacking women while bumping into a suspicious duo who may, or may not, be related to the bigger picture.

But the bigger picture, if you look close enough, is a ton of smaller pictures - all grim comedies - which Wambaugh relishes.

It may be me, it may be Hollywood, but I suspect it's Wambaugh, who has drifted too far from the frontline to remember what's whack and what's just plain dumb.