Cover image of "Hollywood Moon," a novel about the Hollywood police

Joseph Wambaugh, who recently passed away at the age of 88, wrote both novels and nonfiction about police and crime in Los Angeles for more than 50 years. While still at work as an LAPD detective sergeant in 1971, he wrote his first novel, The New Centurions. Two years later I read The Onion Field, his bestselling true-crime story of the kidnapping of two L.A. police officers and its sad consequences. Though most of Wambaugh’s work was fiction, he returned only a few years ago to writing novels about the LAPD after releasing several nonfiction works. The result was a series of police procedurals featuring the Hollywood police. First came Hollywood Station in 2007, followed in 2008 and 2009 by two related novels, Hollywood Crows and Hollywood Moon. He followed them with two final books in the series, Hollywood Hills and Hollywood Nocturne.

No one is a superhero here

Wambaugh is superbly talented. His ear for dialogue, his psychological insight, his knowledge about both criminals and police, his gift of language—all become unmistakably clear in these engrossing novels. He mastered the craft of writing fiction, but these books transcend craft with credible, full-bodied characters and graceful style. Having pioneered the trend toward serious police drama three decades earlier, Wambaugh continued to demonstrate his intimate knowledge of the tension and drama that unfolds inside the LAPD as well as on the street. All his characters are flawed. No one is a superhero.

Hollywood Moon (Hollywood Station #3) by Joseph Wambaugh (2010) 480 pages ★★★★☆

Photo of Hollywood Station, where the Hollywood police are based
Hollywood Station, for real. Image: Pinterest

Outrageous and compelling characters

What is most compelling in this saga of the men and women of Hollywood Station are the recurring characters. Read these books, and you’ll come to know and appreciate the two surfer cops, known only as Flotsam and Jetsam. For example, Jetsam says to his partner about a bowling alley that has come up in one of many conversations about how the two surfers can meet women, “I mean, there’s gotta be opportunities on those lanes for coppers as coolaphonic and hormonally imaginative as the almost four hundred pounds of male heat riding in this car.” And that’s one of the more easily understood passages in Flotsam and Jetsam’s never-ending dialogue.

But there are more. “Hollywood” Nate Weiss, an aspiring actor with a love for mirrors and hopes for a SAG card. “The Oracle,” a 46-year veteran sergeant with the insight of a sensitive psychiatrist. A Ukranian-immigrant detective whose inventive use of the English language would do Mrs. Malaprop proud. And several strong, smart women officers, all struggling to keep their pride and their patience in a blatantly sexist environment.

And those are just the cops! The miscreants include street people like “Trombone Teddy,” formerly a well-known jazz sideman, as well as crystal meth “tweakers” and other addicts. Many of them eke out a meager existence by wearing Batman, Superman, Hulk, or Spiderman costumes and cadging tips from camera-wielding tourists near Graumann’s Chinese Theater. Wambaugh also introduces us to the ex-cons and other ambitious operators whose imaginative schemes are the stuff of the clever plots in these three novels. In fact, you’ll probably learn more than enough about the identity-theft scams and other cons Wambaugh describes to scare the living daylights out of you.

About the author

Photo of Joseph Wambaugh, author of these novels about the Hollywood police
Joseph Wambaugh. Image: Los Angeles Times

Joseph Wambaugh (1937-2025) died recently of cancer at his home in Southern California at the age of 88. Early in the 1970s, he published the crime novels The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, and The Choirboys. They set the tone and the course for the explosion of serious police drama that followed. Wambaugh had served in the Los Angeles Police Department for 14 years, rising from patrolman to detective sergeant. But the success of his early work as a novelist led him to turn to writing full time. All told, he produced 16 crime novels, including the five in the Hollywood Station cycle, and five nonfiction works. Many of his books made their way to television and film screens in the 1970s and 80s. He was made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.

You’ll find this and dozens of other excellent novels at 5 top Los Angeles mysteries and thrillers.

For Wambaugh’s obituary, see “Joseph Wambaugh, Author With a Cop’s-Eye View, Is Dead at 88” (New York Times, February 28, 2025).

I’ve also reviewed two other books in this series:

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