Tuesday 16 February 2016

2 BY JOSEPH WAMBAUGH

2 from Joseph Wambaugh this week. Wambaugh had his first book published in 1970 when I was 6 or 7 years old and he still seems to be going strong – the fifth book in his Hollywood Station series was out back in 2012.

Wambaugh writes about cops mainly, perhaps unsurprisingly as he used to be one.













Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times' said, "Joseph Wambaugh is one of those Los Angeles authors whose popular success always has overshadowed his importance as a writer. Wambaugh is an important writer not simply because he's ambitious and technically accomplished, but also because he 'owns' a critical slice of L.A.'s literary real estate: the Los Angeles Police Department -- not just its inner workings, but also its relationship to the city's political establishment and to its intricately enmeshed social classes. There is no other American metropolis whose civic history is so inextricably intertwined with the history of its police department. That alone would make Wambaugh's work significant, but the importance of his best fiction and nonfiction is amplified by his unequalled ability to capture the nuances of the LAPD's isolated and essentially Hobbesian tribal culture."

Understandably, then, Wambaugh, who lives in California, is known as the "cop-author" with emphasis on the former, since, according to him, most of his fantasies involve the arrest and prosecution of half of California's motorists.


I've read a couple from him, but not for a few years now. Probably fair to say I have most of his 20 plus books on the shelves - 13 at last count, but I don't believe I'm done yet. (20 tubs to go!) 

Time to read him.




The Glitter Dome (1981)



It's the wildest bar in Chinatown, run by a proprietor named Wing who will steal your bar change every chance he gets. On payday the groupies mingle there with off-duty LAPD cops, including homicide detectives Martin Welborn and Al Mackey, who get assigned the case of a murdered Hollywood studio boss who may have been involved in some very strange and dangerous filmmaking. Hilarious at times, heartbreaking at others, this book was likened by the New York Daily News to a 'one-two combination that leaves the reader reeling.'









Floaters (1996)

Who else but Joseph Wambaugh could write "a joy, a hoot, a riot of a book" that is also acclaimed as "one of this season's best crime novels"? That's how The New York Times Book Review and Time, respectively, described his last novel, Finnegan's Week. Nobody writes a faster, funnier, more satisfying tale of cops and criminals, the high life and lowlifes that Wambaugh--and Floaters is his sharpest yet.

Mick Fortney and his partner Leeds manage to cruise above the standard police stress-pools of coffee and Pepto-Bismol--they're water cops in the "Club Harbour Unit," manning a patrol boat on San Diego's Mission Bay. A typically rough day's detail consists of scoping out body-sculpted beauties on pleasure craft, rescuing boating bozos who've run aground, jeering at lifeguards, and hauling in the occasional floater who comes to the surface.

But now their days are anything but typical, because the America's Cup international sailing regattas have come to town and suddenly San Diego is swarming with yacht crazies of every nationality, the cuppies who want to love them, and the looky-look tourists, racing spies, scam artists, and hookers who all want their piece of the action. It's the outstanding body and jaunty smile--full of mischief, full of hell--of one cuppie, a particularly fiery redhead named Blaze, that gets Leeds and Fortney's attention. First Leeds drowns in frustratingly unrequited boozy love from afar. Then, with her increasingly odd behaviour, Blaze tweaks every one of their cop instincts, alerting them that something's not quite right on the waterfront.

Indeed, Blaze will soon lead Detective Anne Zorn and Mick Fortney along a bizarre criminal trail that would be hilarious if it didn't wind up just as nasty as it gets, with a pair of murders right on the eve of the biggest sailing race of all.


Filled with all of Joseph Wambaugh's trademark skills--laugh-out-loud writing, crackling dialogue, outrageous excitement, and, of course, plenty of raunchy veteran cops who leap off the page--Floaters is Wambaugh at the very top of his form.

13 comments:

  1. Wambaugh has certainly been one of those really enduring writers, Col. And he's talented, too. I haven't read his work lately; I ought to renew the acquaintance...

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    1. He seems to have been around forever with some gaps of a few years in-between books... Floaters in 96, then a non-fiction book in 2002 and then his first in his Hollywood Station series in 2006. He seems to have gotten a second or third wind!

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  2. I need to get back to reading him, too. Loved The New Centurions. I bought two or three of his books after finishing that novel. None that I recognize listed in your post.

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    1. I think the ones I read were THE GOLDEN ORANGE and THE ONION FIELD, the second of which was true crime - a non-fiction account of a couple of cop "executions."
      I'll check out THE NEW CENTURIONS - see if I have it and decide which one to start with.

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  3. My life became devastated when my husband sent me packing, after 8 years that we have been together. I was lost and helpless after trying so many ways to make my husband take me back. One day at work, i was absent minded not knowing that my boss was calling me, so he sat and asked me what its was all about i told him and he smiled and said that it was not a problem. I never understand what he meant by it wasn't a problem getting my husband back, he said he used a spell to get his wife back when she left him for another man and now they are together till date and at first i was shocked hearing such thing from my boss. He gave me an email address of the great spell caster who helped him get his wife back, i never believed this would work but i had no choice that to get in contact with the spell caster which i did, and he requested for my information and that of my husband to enable him cast the spell and i sent him the details, but after two days, my mom called me that my husband came pleading that he wants me back, i never believed it because it was just like a dream and i had to rush down to my mothers place and to my greatest surprise, my husband was kneeling before me pleading for forgiveness that he wants me and the kid back home, then i gave Happy a call regarding sudden change of my husband and he made it clear to me that my husband will love me till the end of the world, that he will never leave my sight. Now me and my husband is back together again and has started doing pleasant things he hasn't done before, he makes me happy and do what he is suppose to do as a man without nagging. Please if you need help of any kind, kindly contact Happy for help and you can reach him via email: happylovespell2@gmail.com

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  4. Like you, I read a couple of his novels many years ago; I recall them as being pretty damn' fine. I also saw one or two of the movies based on his novels, and they were good too. It's sad that he seems to have dropped off the radar these days.

    What a card that Junia Noel is.

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    1. I think I owe it to myself to check him out again soon.

      John and Junia does have a certain ring to it, maybe you can connect through her profile?

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  5. Wambaugh is an author I have always wanted to read, but never have. I don't even have one of his books. I should read them if only because once hears so much about LAPD here in California.

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    1. Ooh, I am surprised you haven't yet crossed paths with him Tracy, but then saying that there's a lot of folks I've been meaning to read but haven't yet gotten to.

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  6. I have just been reading about him and thinking I should read more by him. I read a couple a while back - I think, like you, the Onion Field. He is good, and he always sounds like a nice man.

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    1. No doubt Moira, you will pick him up before I do!

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  7. Seen his books, never tried them. Maybe, one of these days...

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    1. Prashant, worth trying at least one of his in my opinion,

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