I cannot improve on the blog post that prompted me to read it, so I'll repost a lengthy excerpt: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/20...Which brings me to what really made my blood boil: the review-fate of one particular book -- "Hollywood Station," the new novel by Joseph Wambaugh.A quick word for those who haven't encountered Joseph Wambaugh and his writing. A onetime Marine and L.A. cop, Wambaugh is a wildly successful author of cop novels and cop nonfiction. Among his best-known books are "The Choirboys," "The Onion Field," "The Black Marble," and "The New Centurions."Wambaugh is anything but a victim deserving our sympathy. He has sold millions of copies of his books, and he has made millions of dollars. All that said, he's also one amazing writer. I've read only three of his books so far, darn it. But my verdicts of these three books ranged from "Wow!" to "Wonderful!" to "Holy cow!" "The Choirboys" in particular struck me as a major novel. I read it muttering, "This is great! This is just fucking great!" My calmer, more reflective, more considered judgment of the book is, by the way, "Fucking great!" "The Choirboys" is big, profane, hilarious, and moving -- a teeming, emotional / physical, evocative heap of rousing storytelling. I confess that I read it with an annoying part of my mind chirping, "Good lord, I like this a whole lot better than I like Pynchon! Why don't the profs and the critics make more of Wambaugh?"(I've had similar reactions reading other rowdy, accessible, moving novels too. A few that come quickly to mind: Dan Jenkins' football novel "Semi-Tough," Terry McMillan's funky and funny "Waiting to Exhale," and V.C. Andrews' Poe-for-teens classic "Flowers in the Attic.")As if popular and wonderful aren't enough, Wambaugh has also been an influential writer. In writing-history terms, he took the Ed McBain-style police procedural and filled it to bursting with irreverence, heart and despair. He was an innovator too. He introduced big helpings of tragedy and comedy (as well as grit and strung-out high spirits) into the recipe. He's been a major influence on TV and movies -- on popular storytelling. When you watch such sprawling, mixed-mode entertainments as "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue," you're seeing shows influenced by and inspired by Joseph Wambaugh.So it's fair to say that -- in popular-fiction and popular-narrative terms, anyway -- Joseph Wambaugh is a very big deal. In news terms, the appearance of a big cop novel from Wambaugh is a big deal too: "Hollywood Station" is Wambaugh's first ambitious cop dramedy in more than a decade. Has the old master still got what it takes? Can the new book possibly live up to his early work?A juicy subject, no? Now here's the mind and judgment of the NYTBR Section at work. The week the new Joseph Wambaugh novel appears, they decide to give two of their glamor fiction-review slots to Ambitious First Novels about Historical Tragedies. And how do they deal with the new Joseph Wambaugh? They consign it to their Crime-roundup column.I don't know what to say or do about this kind of judgment except to shake my head in disbelief. To her credit, Marilyn Stasio wrote a review of the book that is more-than-impressed -- Stasio knows, even if her bosses don't, what a big deal Wambaugh is. And, according to her, Wambaugh is in fab form -- his new novel really rocks. (I've ordered my copy already.) To the Book Review Section's discredit, though, Stasio's review is all of five short paragraphs long, and is merely the first review in a crime-fiction roundup. In other words, the Book Review Section is essentially saying, "This novel isn't of any import unless you're one of those -- sniff, patooie -- people who are into crime fiction, in which case you might have something here to enjoy but you aren't a serious person."I think it's safe to say that Wambaugh's sin is that he doesn't write literary fiction. Shame on him, he creates compulsively readable, highly-charged, big-hearted, narrative cop fiction that's more than a bit rough around the edges. It isn't about ideas. It isn't gamesmanship for the critics and the intellectuals. It's simply exuberant, moving, humane, absorbing -- and, of course, completely accessible.
Joseph Wambaugh served as a LA police officer was one of the first writers to use a more realistic approach to writing about police work. His newest book, Hollywood Station, is his first book in ten years and it is a well balanced mix of black humor and suspense.The story centers around the LAPD Hollywood Station and it has a mix of colorful policeman including two surfer-cops, the grizzled sexists serving with female cops, the wannabe actor cop and the over his head newbie. The first half of the book is made up of alternatively humorous and grim stories of life on the police force. This is something Wambaugh emphasizes, when the police go on a call, they don't know if someone is going to try to kill them or present them with an outlandish situation. He also uses this section to detail the effects of Federal oversight on the post-Rampart scandal LAPD.Just as the book seems to be little more than a collection of anecdotes helping us to understand the world from the cop's point of view, Wambaugh rolls out a tightly constructed suspense plot line involving meth addicts and Eastern European gangsters. Wambaugh toys with the reader, setting up tense situations only to release and then finally hitting the reader with the finale. This reminded me how little suspense is created in modern mysteries, the emphasis being more on creating gritty realism, providing surprises or further developing characters.A number of mystery writers, especially the gritty and LA-centric ones, cite Wambaugh as a key influence and this book is prove that he still has it.
What do You think about Hollywood Station (2006)?
Barely 2 stars. I picked this book up literally sight unseen in a "Date Night with a Book" event at one of the local libraries. Books are separated by genre and gift wrapped and you select one and at check out, the scanner reads the tag on the book and you find out what you "won." I picked Adult Crime/Mystery but this book is not my usual fare. I should've just returned it unread, but I felt like this was a reading challenge and I needed to be a good sport and play along. And I was hoping that I would find a new author to enjoy. The unlimited renewals should've been a warning sign. I LOVE the concept, but if I play again, I won't read the book if I'm not interested.The language is so much colloquial cop lingo that I feel as if I need an interpreter. The humor is not amusing me. I'm not sure if this is too much like the TV show COPS and not enough like Law and Order or Hill Street Blues or NCIS. I like character driven detective murder mysteries and I'm not sure what I am going to get. Each chapter is a series of events from the point of view of a few characters and later you see how the same events affected other characters. Wish me luck...I'll keep you posted.About a quarter of the way into the hardcover, I requested the audiobook from the library. I was actually getting the hang of the book, but I think I prefer the audio to reading. The audiobook is better in that I'm not a huge fan of his writing style and the action keeps it interesting, but there are soooo many characters that if I hadn't read the first several chapters I would not be able to keep them straight and you can't look back with an audiobook. It's fun to hear the foreign accents instead of imagining them.Joseph Wambaugh is famous for writing The Onion Field and The Choirboys but he's not for me.(view spoiler)[If this wasn't written by a former police officer, I would ridicule the female officer forgetting her weapon and drawing her finger. Instead, I wonder if this is an anti-female comment.The California surfer lingo was very annoying and I grew up in a surfing culture! Though, Hawaii's pidgin English favored by the surfing community (like the movie Blue Crush) would be equally annoying.The vast cast of characters were caricatures of cops and bad guys. Overabundance of cliches throughout the book might have been self-deprecating, but irritated me more than entertained me.I liked the convoluted idioms and cliches used by Victor: an intestinal feeling, leopard cannot change its freckles, my little buttertub, far shot, cool your toes, fly in the jelly, pulled the fuzz over our eyes (hide spoiler)]
— Marla
I'd never read a single Joseph Wambaugh book despite knowing of him forever. This was an audio book for my commute and I'm glad I finally sought him out as this was an entertaining romp through the world of Hollywood via police, criminals, low-life, homeless, detectives, tourists and all the other people who make this part of Los Angeles unique to the city. I was surprised at the amount of humor that is in the story--credit goes somewhat to the reader for that. Since I live only a few miles from where a lot of the action takes place, reading this makes me a bit paranoid. It was kind of fun to know some of the locations that Wambaugh discusses in the novel, but the first time I dropped something into a public mail box I had my doubts due to the criminal activity associated with meth-heads stealing things from them. Even the kind of irritating surfer cops kind of grew on me by the end, when at first I thought that they were pretty absurd.
—Joshua
Hollywood Station was the first book that I read by Wambaugh, and I did find that I enjoyed it. Wambaugh created some very colorful characters both cops and villains that made the book interesting. There were a lot of twists and turns, and the reader never knew what these crazy characters were going to do next. I found that my favorite characters ended up being Budgie, Mag, Olive, Andi, and Oracle. Each character was pretty well developed considering the number of characters involved in the story but each of these characters stood out to me for one reason or another. Wambaugh does an excellent job with his world building and shows you a Hollywood that you don't expect. Overall this was an interesting read that I would recommend if you like colorful characters, a few mad capers, and seeing a new side of Hollywood.
—Susan
