Blood on the Moon

By: James Ellroy

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

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 20 years. To solve the case, Hopkins will dump all the rules and risk his career to make the final link and get the killer.

©1984 James Ellroy (P)2010 Audio Go

A VERY CONVOLUTED STORY

Where does Blood on the Moon rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Probably in the middle. It wasn't the best but certainly wasn't the worst.

What did you like best about this story?

The twists and turns. At times they were hard to follow, but added to a good tale.

What does L. J. Ganser bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He made the story. Without his narrative I don't believe I would have finished the story.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When the past of the hero was finally revealed.

so so...

My least favorite ellroy novel. Dont think he'd hit his pulp stage yet. Also my main gripe was the narrator was the absolute wrong one for this.

Avoid if you’re offended by slurs

I get it… noir but honestly unless you can overlook the author using N**ger and F**got about 1,000 times, you’ll be pretty distracted. Also, besides the general misogyny and WHACK ideas about how all gay men actually want to be women, NONE OF THE WOMEN IN THIS STORY MAKE SENSE. None of their reactions make sense, nothing they do makes sense. He does have a way with atmosphere and story. There are some fun bits but really not worth tolerating so much racism and misogyny.

Excellent

Ellroy's prose is powerful in its bluntness. At first it is jarring, and it may take a few tries before you find that it "fits", but sticking with it is very rewarding.

Great Story by a Great Man

Per Mr. Elroy: I write crime stories about Los Angeles 1940’s. Therefore my works mirrors life from the 1940’s and anything after this time is never included.

It’s important to keep this in mind as the reader, his books of that time are time capsules. People acted and talked very different from today. Heroes said what we today call terrible things. Wives put their husbands on pedestals. Crime was rampant and gritty. LAPD was brutally aggressive and hands on with people. Racism was tolerated, as was homophobia. Morals however were higher and there was a clear line in the sand between wrong and right. This all sounds like an oxymoron, and it is. But it’s the past. The past is NOT subjective. It’s important to know where we’ve come from to avoid future mistakes. Many surprised readers were turned off by the racial language, sexual assaults and violence within his books. However this writing must be interpreted in context. As previously written, anything after the 1940’s are not included in his crime novels set in the 1940’s.
Even Stephen King for the most part adds racial language and homophobia to his novels taking place in X time for realistic purposes.

Blood on the Moon is a visceral story about a young LA Police officer during circa 1940’s. Married with a daughter, he lives for being the best cop he can be and lives his job. He believes himself the first line of defense between innocents and depraved lunatics.
He has extramarital affairs, drinks too much coffee and hunts down criminals, both civilians and other cops with old fashioned police work.
Enter the depraved lunatic. We are given glimpses for why he does what he does and a front seat into his bloody hobby. There are many other interesting characters in this novel who either are there to push the story forward or just there. Same as life’s experience of the day to day interacting with others around us.

Mr. Elroy’s writing is poetic, violent, funny and heartbreaking. I would encourage anyone who’s interested in a crime novel of this time period to give it a listen.

Good, not great, kind of stupid

I read this hot on the heels of finishing the LA Quartet, and I gotta say: It's a lot easier for me to take a break from James Ellroy after this book than it was after those four books.
It was certainly a change of pace to have a protagonist who is only deeply conflicted in one or two ways, and to have a plot with no twists to speak of. But some details and plot contrivances were hard to take. I'm used to being baffled at the end of an Ellroy novel, but not the way this one left me.
LJ Ganser did a serviceable job with the text he had to work with, and the book still propels you forward, even if it doesn't end up going much of anywhere.
I hope the other two books of the Loyd Hopkins trilogy are better than this one, but I imagine I'll finish them within the week, regardless (I already changed my mind about taking a break, god help me.)

Looking for new answers

“It’s because outside of the major dreams everything is always changing, and even though you keep doing the same things, you’re looking for new answers.”
- James Ellroy, Blood on the Moon

The first book in a trilogy of books (the L.A. Noir or Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy) that predate the Ellroy genius that is the The L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz) and the Underworld USA Trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, Blood's a Rover).

'Blood on the Moon' has many of the elements that will be repeated in most of his later cop novels (especially those in LA Quartet): idealized women, mothers, sexual obsession, dark history, inner demons, etc. This isn't nearly as good as the best of the LA Quartet, but not bad. It is like discovering a wet moth just after it has climbed out of its cocoon. It is early, imperfect, but contains a lot of creepy potential.

If you are new to Ellroy, don't start here. If you are already an Ellroy fan, this is still worth the time.

It’s hard hitting…

Noir. Violent. Leonard always seems to do a great job exposing the criminal elements in society as ignorant and soulless.

A master of crime

A master of crime at work introduction into the series of cop after a crazy killer as he puts the Clues together

good story, not for everyone

This is a pretty decent detective novel. However I will say that some people will get offended by the way things are said on here. The author does make it a point to try to explain the reasoning behind everyone important as to why they are the way they are but be sure it will take some time. The twists are almost non-existent in this however there are points when you get mildly surprised by people. The reader did well in portraying every character uniquely and wasn't dry to listen to. Overall I am new to this genre specifically and this wasn't what I was expecting but it was entertaining nonetheless.