Bloody moon is the third novel of James Elroy, the first published in France. It’s also the first volume of the trilogy. Lloyd Hopkins (the two others being Cause’ of the night and the suicide hill).
I had already read the twice first novels of this author, brown’s Requiem and illegal worker that I had well loved. With bloody moon, I have the feeling that Elroy is passed to the superior speed, his writing has take off, is assert, for become almost perfect.
In the style of Simenon in one all other gender, it’s writing where each word is just, worked, deep. No unless flourishes, no more of concession too extreme. Just for plunged in the intrigue and in the universe of characters.
The principal characters are Lloyd Hopkins, brilliant cop, tough and obsess by one ideal: protect innocence that stays in the world, and in particular in this town of LA. The intrigue: a psychopath poet to his hours massacres the women in all impunity, nobody has done the link between his murders, and certain have been class like suicides. A poet endow, who share with Lloyd this strange ideal of innocence protection.
The two men, each in their way, look like to the super hero, in the farcical and conceited side of the thing, they save the souls, of women… But with one huge difference: the one kill, the other love. They fight them, positioned in the same obsession effort. Lloyd scarified almost his carrier and his life’s family for arrest his murderer. He acts like his live in depended. It’s perhaps effectively the case. Against of others novels, the hero, Lloyd isn’t likeable, he can hurt, shock, annoy or be misunderstood. However, it’s passionate and intriguing. We are captivated by the deeper and the mood of character. Reflect of writer himself, strange man that Elroy. In the entire novel, like the twice before, but more assumed, more troubling, an atmosphere almost mystic, full of ideal, of death, of transcendence. Adding, to that omnipresence sensuality, lovely or morbid.
The women, more again that Lloyd, the cop super-hero, are the central point of novel, around her turn the universe, all come back, one day or other. Bloody moon, is for me a marvellous and initiate novel, he don’t let indifferent. He let a little strange taste who tickle the spirit when we has approached of literacy perfection and when we are plunged in the deeper of human spirit, his hollow, look like to sewer of urban jungle. To read absolutely.