Customer Reviews

Blood on the Moon (Microsoft Reader)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ellroy has called this book a weak comparison to Harris' "Red Dragon", but I disagree. Then again, I wasn't impressed with "Red Dragon" because the main character, Will Graham, was too wrapped up in his own problems to throw himself into the mind of a serial killer. I was impressed with Ellroy's main character, Lloyd Hopkins, being a truly awful person but a great cop who disregards his personal life, feels a kinship for a killer and breaks all the rules to do what he knows he must to hunt down a monster. He really is crazy, whereas Will Graham just worried that he was going crazy. The story has the hard edge you'd expect from Ellroy's characters and crimes. This book was the basis for James Woods' 1987 movie "Cop," which has the story's grittiness down pat. Four stars - not five - because "LA Confidential" and "Black Dahlia" set a very high standard for Ellroy.

Third book of James Ellroy and first novel of the Lloyd Hopkins trilogy, BLOOD ON THE MOON has been published in 1984.

Adopting for the first time in his career an omniscient point of view, James Ellroy describes two destinies meant to meet for a deadly encounter. Both men have suffered a traumatic sexual experience in their teen days. Lloyd Hopkins has become the best criminal investigator of the Los Angeles Police Department and spends his life protecting "the Innocence". On the contrary, "The Poet" has developed a serial killer syndrome and murders young women, repeating indefinitely the same vengeance scheme.

Unlike Fred Underhill, the main character of CLANDESTINE, Ellroy's precedent book, Lloyd Hopkins doesn't consider his job as redemptive, he simply sees it as the most important thing in his life and will therefore lose his wife. He is a missionary to whom to be the best means to be alone, in his job and in his life.

I've liked a lot the way James Ellroy compares the psychology of his protagonists who have to react in front of the same situations. I also remember very well the shock I had when I discovered BLOOD ON THE MOON in 1985 ; it was the first time in my life as a reader that I had the feeling that a thriller could be also literature.

A book for your library.

James Ellroy's squeamish stomach churning crime drama "Blood on the Moon" is an account of an analytical investigation of a series of murders that blighted the streets of Los Angeles over a period of approximately 20 years.

Ellroy's two main characters representing the pursued and the pursuer are both deeply developed, psychologically challenged and highly intelligent. Detective sergeant Lloyd Hopkins is the most successful homicide investigator on the L.A.P.D.. As a young cop he was mentored by veteran cop Arthur "Dutch" Peltz, now a captain, but soon the student became the teacher. Hopkins was so celebrated that he was able to function outside the guidleines of official police protocol. He was extremely brainy but also had his psychological warts. Although blessed with beautiful family and wife he was a relentless philanderer who also had an inexplicable aversion to music and loud noises. His analysis of a crime scene involving a murdered young woman uncovered clues leading to a pursuit of what he believed was a serial murderer.

His adversary, known as "the Poet" was himself in possession of a brilliant mind which he used to methodically plot out a series of murders to appease the playing out of his sexual fantasies. The Poet who exhibited covert and repressed homosexual tendencies was brutally raped as a slightly strange but innocent high school student. The rape committed by two fellow students came at a time when he was coveting an attractive but unattainable high school coed, totally shattering his conception of his own sexuality. The Poet turned to carefully stalking young women who reminded him of his high school beloved and murdering them. He was also keeping tabs of his rapists, one who was a homosexual street hustler who was protected by the other who was a L.A. sheriff's deputy.

Ellroy chronicles both the perpetration of a number of brutal murders as well as the probing investigation which leads to the inevitable showdown between the two main characters, a classic confrontation between good and evil. The lines of demarcation between the two, in part cleverly erased by the adroit Ellroy, were not well defined.

The cruel and bloody story of the restless fight between sergeant Hopkins and a psychotic women's killer,both,on their way,defenders of the same innocence.Dark and hopeless.

A great beginning to the Llyod Hopkins trilogy. I am a big fan of Ellroy's work and this book begins with a bang and sustains its pace throughout. What I love most about the writing is he deals with similar themes a la James Patterson, Walter Mosley, or Jonathan Kellerman, but in a more eloquent, interesting, and realistic fashion. A beach read with real heart and beautiful prose.

Easier to follow than some of his later stuff, but a plot that won't quit.

Was drawn to the novel by its title. I suspect Ellroy, who is a contemporary, was awed by the title, as I was, from a very good Robert Mitchum western. Ellroy has a gift for elegantly contrived gore and disgust scenes. I salute him. I have the same facility but little opportunity to use it.

After reading L.A. Confidential, my first Ellroy after attempting to read My Dark Places and the Black Dahlia

I felt a bit let down. At the halfway point am considering making this my last Ellroy.

Truly one of the worst books that I've ever had the misfortune to read.
Ellroy obviously knows nothing about firearms, automobiles, and, quite possibly, anything else to do with writing.
Phew!!!!!!!!!