Friday, December 01, 2023

Blood on the Moon by James Ellroy

 

(pb; 1984: Book One of the L.A. Noir/Harold Lloyd trilogy) 

From the inside flap

“Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins can’t stand music, or any loud sounds. He’s got a beautiful wife, but he can’t get enough of other women. And instead of bedtime stories, he regales his daughters with bloody crime stories. He’s a thinking man’s cop with a dark past and an obsessive drive to hunt down monsters who prey on the innocent.

“Now there’s something haunting him. He sees a connection in a series of increasingly gruesome murders of women committed over a period of twenty years. Hopkins will dump all the rules and risk his career to make the final link and get the killer.”



Review

This edited review was originally published this site on September 20, 2006. That review has since been deleted.

Lloyd Hopkins, a womanizing, high-strung supercop who's turned his traumas into an unhinged and noble quest to “protect innocence,” stumbles onto the bloody work of a rhyme-minded mass murderer. The victims are almost always women; the killings are sexual, reflecting, in a warped/inverse doppelgänger way, Lloyd's obsessive notions about women.

Racism, sacrifice, murder, redemption, rape and bad poetry abound here, theme- and otherwise. This politically incorrect novel is excellent, memorable, and often coarse. Author Ellroy isn't trying to sell us prettiness; he's showing us blunt, surly veracities.

Followed by Because the Night.

Those who’ve seen the below film version, Cop (1988), should note that the novel has a considerably different ending than the novel. Even if you ‘ve seen the film, the book is a raw, worthwhile and stunning work, one worth reading.

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film version of Blood on the Moon, retitled Cop, was released stateside in March 1988.
James B. Harris scripted and directed it.

James Woods played Lloyd Hopkins. Lesley Ann Warren played Kathleen McCarthy. Charles Durning played Arthur “Dutch” Peltz. Charles Haid played Delbert “Whitey” Haines. Raymond J. Barry played Captain Fred Gaffney. Randi Brooks played Joanie Pratt.



 



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