BOOK REVIEW: 'Hollywood Hills' Continues Raucous Tradition of Joe Wambaugh's Hollywood Station Police Procedural Novels
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
What started out as a trilogy -- the Hollywood Station police procedurals from Joseph Wambaugh: "Hollywood Station," "Hollywood Crows," and "Hollywood Moon" -- has now morphed into a quartet with the publication of his 20th book "Hollywood Hills" (Little, Brown, 368 pages, $26.99). Can a quintet chronicling the midwatch uniformed officers of the station be far behind?
Following the pattern of the three previous novels, Wambaugh has a main crime with other incidents arising from the patrol activities of Watch 5, the midwatch, of Hollywood Station on Wilcox Avenue. Among those patroling the streets of Hollywood: Wannabe actor "Hollywood" Nate Weiss, who has a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card and aspires to a career in movies; surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam, who occupy a parallel universe closed to outsiders; veteran Viv Daley and her younger partner Georgie Adams; probationer officer Britney Small under the supervision of 44-year-old LAPD veteran Della Ravelle, And Nate's new partner "Snuffy" Salcedo, most recently a driver for the latest in a long line of imported-from-the-East Coast police chiefs. (The long night is over for the LAPD with Charlie Beck, a veteran officer on the force, now in charge, after a succession of what Wambaugh calls"Misters").
The main crime in what could be called a "dramedy" novel involves B-movie director Rudy Ressler, and the woman he refers to as his fiancée, Leona Brueger, the older-but-still-foxy widow of a meat tycoon. Nate, who's pushing 40 himself, manages to elude the seductive moves of this 60-something cougar, but, wanting to stay in her good graces, consents to keep an eye on their estate in the Hollywood Hills while they're away. Nigel Wickland, Leona's London-born art dealer and adviser, has his educated and avaricious eye on two paintings hanging in Leona's Hollywood Hills mansion and is seeking the cooperation of Leona's live-in butler/chef, Raleigh Dibble, who wants to put his prison past behind him but is tempted by a shot at financial independence.
Wambaugh weaves true crimes like the murder of actor Ashton Kutcher's girlfriend in 2001 and the posse of teen-age burglars dubbed by news media the "Bling-Ring" into his fictional but believable crimes. Jonas Claymore and Megan Burke, a pair of young "tweakers" (prescription drug addicts) want to emulate the Bling-Ring and they begin by checking out the mansions in the Hollywood Hills, including Leona Brueger's estate, inhabited while Rudy and Leona are vacationing in Italy by Raleigh and Leona's brother-in-law Marty Brueger. Megan, from Bend, Oregon, is barely out of her teens but is a wasted shell of her former self after a year or so of living the life of a prescription pill addict.
Joe Wambaugh specializes in writing about uniformed cops rather than plainclothed detectives and, as a former LAPD patrol veteran himself, the 73-year-old Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America has no equal. It's too bad that so many cop shows on TV don't pay the proper attention -- and respect -- to the uniformed men and women who "serve and protect". The best show that did this, in my opinion, was the late, lamented "Hill Street Blues."
("COPS" on Fox, one of the longest running TV programs in the nation --it premiered on March 11, 1989 -- and has aired 948 episodes as of September 29, 2010, does this task in documentary series form. It began its 23rd season this past September, and has garnered four Emmy nominations.)
Wambaugh's descriptions of the characters of Hollywood and the men and women of the LAPD who keep them from harming themselves and the tourists who gather to watch their antics might seem beyond reality, but they're quite true to life. Getting a "wedgie" is a hazard in the Hollywood public library branch and uniformed female cops are a particularly attractive target victim, if Wambaugh is to be believed. This is especially true when there's a "Hollywood" (full) Moon" lighting up the hills and flats of this most ethnically and economically diverse district of Los Angeles.
The watch commander from 1960 to 2006, called the "Oracle" by his officers, was the one they respected the most. Here's Wambaugh, describing the end of one daily roll call meeting: "The cops gathered their gear, but before leaving the room, each of them touched for luck the framed photo of their late sergeant whom they'd call the Oracle They had loved their old supervisor, and he had thought of them as his children."
About the author: Born in East Pittsburgh, PA in 1937, Joseph Wambaugh served in the Marine Corps before the joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1960. He was on the force for 14 years, rising through the ranks from patrolman to detective sergeant. He has an associate of arts degree from Chaffey College in San Bernardino County, CA and bachelor's and master's degrees from California State University, Los Angeles. The Hollywood Station series, which debuted in 2006, constituted the first fiction he had written about the LAPD since his novel "The Delta Star" in 1983.
Publisher's website: www.hachettebookgroup.com