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devlinwav's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
andyc_elsby232's review against another edition
3.0
You know, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say James Ellroy has some issues.
thisisstephenbetts's review against another edition
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.
_lilbey_'s review against another edition
2.0
Not only were the characters unlikable, I actively DISLIKED pretty much all of them. So many tropes and stereotypes, even for being written in the '80s. And why does this cop vocally scream all the time? What IS that?
jdcorley's review
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Attempting a more standard cop versus serial killer story, Ellroy hasnt yet hit upon the right mixture of hate, terror and respect in his protagonists. And his protagonist's wife and daughters are pretty much a pile of nothing to reflect his problems onto. There is something here - the horror of the opening scene echoes in a way that "this must be the killers origin story" scenes rarely do. The racism and hatred, the homophobia and violence, above all the masculine self-loathing and mixed hatred of and desire for women as redemptive Madonna/whore are not only there but echoed again and again in many places and ways. That makes the antagonist a rarity for Ellroy - someone we almost feel we understand. He's just someone in the 70s, man. People were like that then.
happeningalmond's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
jimmypat's review against another edition
3.0
I'm almost convinced that this book is, at some level, a parody; if for nothing else, it is the title's connection to the gruesome events of the first chapter. If there is a connection there, then the title is the grimmest sort of humor. The book is fast paced with Ellroy's usual fury, but it is also kind of stupid and bizarre; often the book feels like an over-the-top grotesque cartoon. It reads like a first novel, but he had published two very good novels before this one, so it makes me wonder what was really going on here. I'm eager to read the other two books in this trilogy to see if there are just as whack-a-doodle as this one.
jfictitional's review against another edition
3.0
This is my third foray into the mad land of James Ellroy, following "The Black Dahlia" and "L.A. Confidential." To paraphrase a review of "Cop," the film adaptation of this book, anyone without a history of reading Ellroy would think this is a violent, sick, contrived pulp thriller, and that would certainly be an accurate description of its surfaces. But unlike those two novels I mentioned earlier, what you see with "Blood on the Moon" is more or less what you get. It's very much early Ellroy, having not yet mastered or even conceived of his pared-down, staccato prose, and instead leaning hard on his other signature: a brutal, nihilistic view of the world and the warped personalities in it.
Although just barely over 250 pages (in its original hardcover edition), I came away feeling like this story could have been told in just over half that. I thought the same of the other two novels, but by then Ellroy had learned to imbue his plots with a sense of the epic and labyrinthine, that the machinations of the characters had far-reaching and often tragic consequences. "Blood on the Moon" ultimately boils down to a cat-and-mouse between two wackos on opposite sides of the law, dealing with their psychosexual hangups in drastically different ways. Released just a few years after Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon," this is another pioneer in that "maybe cops and killers aren't so different" subgenre, but where Harris was reaching for something profound, Ellroy's ambitions are far more blunt.
Det. Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, wunderkind detective and the only man who can hold back the darkness, is like a weird mix of executioner and priest. His idea of bedtime stories is to recall old cases, cautionary tales against the "shitstorm" that lurks right beyond his front door. His youngest daughter eats it up; his wife is disgusted, even as she is in awe of Lloyd and is frequently turned on by his weirdness. This I couldn't wrap my head around - just about every female character has their own deeply-ingrained hangups, and find Hopkins's quirks almost masturbatory in their attractiveness; in fact, all of them drop their pants for him at some point or other.
To Hopkins, every woman is an angel, every woman is to be saved and worshiped. Suffice to say he's is a messed-up and kind of angsty protagonist: he moves in a frenzied run, he screams when having epiphanies or in frustration, he cries over dead bodies and vows to avenge them. So much time is spent reconciling his apparently genius intellect to his questionable sanity that this becomes more of a character study than a true cop thriller.
An equal amount of time is devoted to the killer, who in more ways than one is essentially Hopkins's doppelganger (right down to the running and screaming), but here Ellroy also indulges in some of his usual lurid bloodletting. Even in his blunt, efficient style the murder scenes are difficult to process, particularly a later moment when the killer exacts revenge on someone who set him on his path. Which leads me to one of the most significant issues of the story: whether or not indicative of the time it was written I can't say, but the psychology - particularly in regards to homosexuality - is frightfully uninformed at best and deeply offensive at worst. The killer commits his murders out of a twisted form of love, but also as an attempt to rationalize his tenuous understanding of his own sexuality, brought on by a traumatic event. It becomes quite muddled, especially when he turns his fixation on Hopkins, and I'm not sure I ever fully understood this aspect of the killer's psyche. Even if this weren't the case, Ellroy seems to have no problem throwing in a lot of homophobic (and racist) slang until it is almost hectoring (not to mention the number of times people get kicked or shot in the groin). Again, possibly a sign of the times, but at some point they threaten to become more than subtext, which is truly unfortunate. And the attempts to add intrigue by making the killer a poet are almost laughable in their pretension (besides the fact that, in 2017, this is long-tired cliche).
Then, for those on return tours of duty, there's the feeling of Ellroy still honing his craft. Large chunks of conversation between characters - particularly Hopkins and his various lovers - are essentially backstory made dialogue. Most of it is necessary to understanding them as people, but it's awkwardly handled and reads like the exposition it is. It's not even an issue Ellroy has ever really fixed; he's just become good at making it less obvious. If this is your first foray, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about.
Still, journeyman Ellroy is capable of a specificity in place and intensity most writers have trouble matching (guys like Patterson, Connelly or Grisham who write with class, not morbid curiosity or rage). What the plot lacks in depth it compensates for in momentum; the characters, while not exactly relatable, are weirdly interesting. If you have the stomach for it, you won't find what makes Ellroy so revered in mystery circles here, but you'll get some brief glimpses into the writer he would become.
Although just barely over 250 pages (in its original hardcover edition), I came away feeling like this story could have been told in just over half that. I thought the same of the other two novels, but by then Ellroy had learned to imbue his plots with a sense of the epic and labyrinthine, that the machinations of the characters had far-reaching and often tragic consequences. "Blood on the Moon" ultimately boils down to a cat-and-mouse between two wackos on opposite sides of the law, dealing with their psychosexual hangups in drastically different ways. Released just a few years after Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon," this is another pioneer in that "maybe cops and killers aren't so different" subgenre, but where Harris was reaching for something profound, Ellroy's ambitions are far more blunt.
Det. Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, wunderkind detective and the only man who can hold back the darkness, is like a weird mix of executioner and priest. His idea of bedtime stories is to recall old cases, cautionary tales against the "shitstorm" that lurks right beyond his front door. His youngest daughter eats it up; his wife is disgusted, even as she is in awe of Lloyd and is frequently turned on by his weirdness. This I couldn't wrap my head around - just about every female character has their own deeply-ingrained hangups, and find Hopkins's quirks almost masturbatory in their attractiveness; in fact, all of them drop their pants for him at some point or other.
To Hopkins, every woman is an angel, every woman is to be saved and worshiped. Suffice to say he's is a messed-up and kind of angsty protagonist: he moves in a frenzied run, he screams when having epiphanies or in frustration, he cries over dead bodies and vows to avenge them. So much time is spent reconciling his apparently genius intellect to his questionable sanity that this becomes more of a character study than a true cop thriller.
An equal amount of time is devoted to the killer, who in more ways than one is essentially Hopkins's doppelganger (right down to the running and screaming), but here Ellroy also indulges in some of his usual lurid bloodletting. Even in his blunt, efficient style the murder scenes are difficult to process, particularly a later moment when the killer exacts revenge on someone who set him on his path. Which leads me to one of the most significant issues of the story: whether or not indicative of the time it was written I can't say, but the psychology - particularly in regards to homosexuality - is frightfully uninformed at best and deeply offensive at worst. The killer commits his murders out of a twisted form of love, but also as an attempt to rationalize his tenuous understanding of his own sexuality, brought on by a traumatic event. It becomes quite muddled, especially when he turns his fixation on Hopkins, and I'm not sure I ever fully understood this aspect of the killer's psyche. Even if this weren't the case, Ellroy seems to have no problem throwing in a lot of homophobic (and racist) slang until it is almost hectoring (not to mention the number of times people get kicked or shot in the groin). Again, possibly a sign of the times, but at some point they threaten to become more than subtext, which is truly unfortunate. And the attempts to add intrigue by making the killer a poet are almost laughable in their pretension (besides the fact that, in 2017, this is long-tired cliche).
Then, for those on return tours of duty, there's the feeling of Ellroy still honing his craft. Large chunks of conversation between characters - particularly Hopkins and his various lovers - are essentially backstory made dialogue. Most of it is necessary to understanding them as people, but it's awkwardly handled and reads like the exposition it is. It's not even an issue Ellroy has ever really fixed; he's just become good at making it less obvious. If this is your first foray, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about.
Still, journeyman Ellroy is capable of a specificity in place and intensity most writers have trouble matching (guys like Patterson, Connelly or Grisham who write with class, not morbid curiosity or rage). What the plot lacks in depth it compensates for in momentum; the characters, while not exactly relatable, are weirdly interesting. If you have the stomach for it, you won't find what makes Ellroy so revered in mystery circles here, but you'll get some brief glimpses into the writer he would become.
bundy23's review against another edition
4.0
Better than most super serial killer vs super homicide detective novels purely for its no-fucks-given brutality. It was entertaining enough that I’ll probably read the other two books in the series.