Ex-cop turned #1 New York Times bestselling writer Joseph Wambaugh forged a new kind of literature with his great early police procedurals. Here in his classic debut novel, Wambaugh presents a stunning, raw, and unforgettable depiction of life behind the thin blue line.





In a class of new police recruits, Augustus Plebesly is fast and scared. Roy Fehler is full of ideals. And Serge Duran is an ex-marine running away from his Chicano childhood. In a few weeks they'll put on the blue uniform of the LAPD. In months they'll know how to interpret the...

Ex-cop turned #1 New York Times bestselling writer Joseph Wambaugh forged a new kind of literature with his great early police procedurals. Gritty, luminous, and ultimately stunning, this novel is Wambaugh at his best--a tale of a street cop on the hardest beat of his life.
Twenty and two. Those are the numbers turning in the mind of William "Bumper" Morgan: twenty years on the job, two days before he "pulls the pin" and walks away from it forever. But on the gritty streets of L.A., people look at Bumper like some kind of knight in armor--they've plied him with come-ons, hot tips,...

This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.

Partners in the Los Angeles Police Department, they're haunted by terrifying dark secrets of the nightwatch-shared predawn drink and sex sessions they call choir practice. Each wears his cynicism like a bulletproof jockstrap-each has his horror story, his bad dream, his night shriek. He is afraid of his friends-he is afraid of himself.

He is a damned good cop--a burned-out homicide detective wrapped around a Smith & Wesson .38 and a vodka bottle. She is his partner--twice divorced, nursing a grudge against men, obsessed by the awful temptation of love.

Praise for The Black Marble

" Joseph] Wambaugh sidesteps all the cliches."--Baltimore Sun

"Superb . . . his best book "--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"First-rate . . . fast, colorful, and gripping . . . as touching as it is breathlessly entertaining."--Cosmopolitan

On June 25, 1989, the naked corpse of schoolteacher Susan Reinert was found wedged into her hatchback car in a hotel parking lot near Philadelphia's "Main Line."Her two children had vanished.The Main Line Murder Case burst upon the headlines--and wasn't resolved for seven years.Now, master crime writer Joseph Wambaugh reconstructs the case from its roots, recounting the details, drama, players and pawns in this bizarre crime that shocked the nation and tore apart a respectable suburban town.The massive FBI and state police investigation ultimately centered on two men.Dr. Jay C. Smith--By day...

A grim look at the ugly underbelly of life as a Hollywood copy

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.

L.A. Wambaugh-style. A world of cops on the rocks with a twist of murder.
A cheap hooker named Missy Moonbeam takes a fatal dive from the roof of a sleazy hotel. But what's a Caltech phone number doing in her trick book? And how does that connect to a dead private eye and a useless credit card? And what does all that have to do with a Whisky-class Russian sub and the Nobel Prize?
Join Joseph Wambaugh's ravaged cops of Rampart Station as they follow a trail of corruption from the world of pimps and crazies to the think-tank labs of the country's top chemistry wizards--where...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Raucous cops, outlaw bikers, and suntanned celebrities collide in a steamy landscape swirling with natural beauty and unnatural death.

Seventeen months ago the California desert revealed the remains of Jack Watson. The rich man's son was found incinerated in a Rolls-Royce, a bullet in his head. Now, a year and a half later, Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Sidney Blackpool is called into the desert to take on the case. But what begins for Blackpool as an investigation sandwiched between golf games in nearby Palm Springs quickly...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - When a pair of lowlife thieves cross the border into Tijuana, three tenacious cops cross the line.

Fin Finnegan is a San Diego police detective and wannabe actor who's passing midlife crisis and heading straight for midlife meltdown. The last thing he wants when he's gearing up for a TV audition is a routine truck theft case. The last thing he needs after three messy divorces is a sexy female investigator assigned to the case. Fin's abysmal luck is holding out--he's got not only the theft investigation but an uneasy alliance with two strong-willed...