THE GLITTER DOME

More gross-out adventures, Wambaugh-style, at the L.A. Police Department—with a murder investigation in Hollywood and side-trips into narcotics, kiddy porn, massage parlors, transvestitism, and police brutality. Again, like The Choirboys, this is more a montage of grotesque/grim/comic vignettes than a novel. But the main focus is on two miserable mid-40s detectives assigned to "clear"—by fakery, if necessary—the strange Sunset Blvd. murder of movie-studio chief Nigel St. Claire: Al Mackey, who's alcoholic, suicidal, sloppy, much-divorced, recently impotent; and cool, neat Martin Welborn, who's suffering from a marital separation and haunted by two of his cases (the murder of an informer, a horrid child-mutilation). So Mackey and Welborn start sleuthing around the movie studio. But their main clues are soon coming instead from farcically coincidental cases pursued by other cop-teams. . . like vicious narcs "Ferret" and "Weasel" or sadistic "street monsters" Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand. And these clues—involving a hustler/model (a pseudo-naive Marine), a teenage-runaway hooker, and other sleazy types—suggest that St. Claire had teamed up with a mystery man (in a Bentley) to recruit actors for kiddy porn. . .or maybe even a snuff movie. Yes, Hollywood's foulness is the theme here—as becomes blatantly clear when Mackey and Welborn attend (undercover) a big movie-world party: the guests mix their "metaphors of sex and money like a horde of hookers"; Mackey winds up with a revolting masochist who demands that he handcuff her ("I'm helpless, you filthy gorilla of a rapist!"); and Welborn falls for an actress. . .whose career-over-love attitude will help edge him into suicide. Serious stuff. Unfortunately, however, Wambaugh's mixture of cartoon-violence, station-house satire (a blowhard captain named Woofer), and emotional matters doesn't quite work this time around; the alcoholic cop in The Black Marble was more engaging and tragic than either of the similarly burned-out basket cases here. And the mystery plot itself goes nowhere fast. Still, those who reveled in The Choirboys' neanderthal hijinks will probably not be disappointed (there are chases, practical jokes, and one really disgusting slapstick sequence). And even more discriminating readers—who'll be annoyed by the overkill, the messy plotting, and the jarring shifts in tone—will continue to be impressed by Wambaugh's pungent dialogue and garishly convincing details.