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Leona Brueger is a rich widow, and her mansion's walls are covered with fine art. When she decides to go on a vacation to Italy with her latest lover, B-list director Rudy Ressler, her nearly bankrupt art dealer, Nigel Wickland, comes up with an elaborate plan to steal two of the paintings and replace them with photographic look-alikes. He enlists the aid of Leona's new butler, Raleigh Dibble, who is an ex-con who is tempted by the hefty pay-off. However, Raleigh never feels completely comfortable about the theft. Due to a series of unforeseen events, the paintings end up in the hands of two young drug addicts who attempt to sell them back to Nigel for a pittance of their true worth. And that is the plot of HOLLYWOOD HILLS. In addition to the art theft, the book focuses on several police teams working for the LAPD. The first pair are two surfer dudes who have been nicknamed “Flotsam” and “Jetsam” in talk in surfer speak. The second pair are “Hollywood Nate” Weiss, a Jew who is attempting to get into the film industry, and his Mexican partner, Snuffy Salcedo. The third pair is an older cop, Della Ravelle, who is training her partner, Britney Small. The adventures of each of these teams, as well as a few secondary teams, are told in a series of vignettes that are interspersed throughout the narrative. These episodes relate only very tangentially to the main plot. I assume that the antics of the cop teams are meant to be comedic, but I mostly found them stupid. There's a situation involving a perp with a penis pump, various outrageous lunatic behavior outside the Grauman's Chinese Theater, a Wedgie Bandit and so on. I felt that Wambaugh was aiming at a laugh rather than any development of the plot and characters. Oddly, the two female cops go in the other direction and are extremely earnest as Della provides lessons in being a cop to Britney. Add to that the fact that the plot was very thin and there was no smooth narrative flow, and you can see why HOLLYWOOD HILLS wasn't a book that I particularly enjoyed. However, based on the reaction of members of a mystery discussion group that I belong to, I may be in the minority in feeling that way. § Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts(4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, January 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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