If you're an Ellroy fan, then this is interesting enough to warrant a 3 (to see the development of Ellroy's themes and obsessions), but if you're not it's probably a 1. So I'll settle.

2022 book #66. 1984. Brilliant but unstable homicide cop in LA believes his latest case is the work of a serial killer but his superiors disagree. He finds a horrifying connection, he and the killer are in love with the same woman. Much too brutal of a story for me. ( )

Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins seems to be a genius at his job but so much in his private life. But his insight provides a link with the deaths of females over the last twenty years if only he could convince his superiors to provide the manpower.
Strangely I think overall I really enjoyed the book, but it had its moments when I was not too sure of that. ( )

A man has been brutally murdering women over many years and getting away with it because no one has ever connected the deaths as each murder is quite different from the last. But police detective Lloyd Hopkins notices something at one wrongful death that leads him to connecting the pieces. Can he also find out who the killer is before more innocent people are consigned to death?

So, I had previously read Ellory's L.A. Quartet books and had enjoyed them for the most part. There were certainly some problematic parts, with racist and misogynist language being big on that list, but I felt those could be chalked up to showing a seedier side of the so-called "good old days." On the whole, the mysteries and characterizations were compelling enough to overpower the issues. So I thought I might try this other series as well.

Well, here is a different story altogether. The book immediately opens with a gratuitous scene of physical and sexual violence that is unsettling. (Further acts of violence are later included; while also bloody and gross, these seem to fit the narrative a bit better and are somewhat less disturbing.) The narrative then shifts awkwardly to race riots, which really have very little to do with the rest of the book and seems to just be an excuse for Ellory to drop the n-word repeatedly.

The rest of the book then takes places in the 1980s (aka the same time it was being written) so there's really no reason for the outdated misogyny and fake morality to be so prevalent. The fact that Hopkins has his career on the line because he's cheated on his wife is so contrived. Yes, I know the 80s weren't a pinnacle of wonderfully glorious times and attitudes either, but much of it felt like Ellory's formula for the books set in earlier times and it just doesn't work well here.

The characterizations felt choppy at best; Hopkins and the killer are the only ones really given much development and even that is pretty bare bones. In fact, it's more like "back story" than development as "development" would imply some kind of growth or change. Side characters are exactly that -- there just to move the narrative forward and equally able to change personalities as needed for the story to proceed.

The story itself is not that compelling either. This book is decidedly not a mystery because you see from the killer's point of view and know who he is stalking and even why he is doing the things he does; the only thing you don't know is his actual name (although you know all the other details of his past and present situations, such as the high school he attended and his place of work). As this is an Ellory book, you also know that somehow or other Hopkins will put the pieces together eventually; it's just a matter of how and when. Sometimes such a device can work well, but here it sort of fell flat. It should have ramped up the suspense but instead it all felt so inevitable.

Ellory is definitely talented as a writer, and you can see some of the literary devices he was going for, such as setting up Hopkins and the killer as mirrored foils. But this book just doesn't have enough value to outweigh the cons. I won't be continuing on with this series.

Note: the audiobook narrator did a good job, but he could not save a bad book. ( )

When James Ellroy wrote his third novel, he was a long way from developing the unique skills that makes his later fiction so compelling. "Blood on the Moon" is interesting as the work of a fascinating writer in embryo; it's not interesting or rewarding in its own right. The trouble is in his characters, who don't behave, talk, or act in realistic ways. In particular, the main female character seems like a lonely teenager's idea of an intelligent woman, her words (especially her poems and journal entries) all in feverish early high-school style. The villain also seems like a surly freshman's fantasy alter ego, twisted, powerful, and (of course) self-loathingly gay. Where the later Ellroy largely omits psychologizing in favor of ultra-concise description and expertly deployed violence, here we have to suffer through long passages of purple thought passages that are just icky where they should be terrifying. Fortunately, there is better to come. ( )