Joseph Wambaugh: 21 books

“Each wears his cynicism like a bulletproof jockstrap—each has his horror story, his bad dream, his nightshriek. He is afraid of his friends—he is afraid of himself.”—New York Times Partners in the Los Angeles Police Department, they’re haunted by terrifying dark secrets of the...

A super follow-up to Hollywood Station, Wambaugh returns to the beat he knows best, taking readers on a darkly funny ride-along with a cast of flawed LAPD cops and eccentric lowlifes you won't forget. When LAPD cops Hollywood Nate and Bix Rumstead find themselves caught up with bombshell Margot Aziz,...

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...

Fifteen-year-old Lynda Mann's savagely raped and strangled body is found along a shady footpath near the English village of Narborough. Though a massive 150-man dragnet is launched, the case remains unsolved. Three years later the killer strikes again, raping and strangling teenager Dawn Ashforth...

Playground for the rich, arena for the powerful, graveyard for the unlucky—welcome to Palm Springs!   For some, it’s the pleasure capital of the world. For other, it’s a city of last chances, a paradise on the edge of the desert. For soon-to-be-ex-cop Lynn Cutter, sweating out a disability...

Fin Finnegan, a San Diego police detective and wannabe actor heading straight for a midlife meltdown, is assigned a routine truck theft that turns into a toxic chemical spill, setting off a bizarre chain reaction of death and murder on both sides of the Mexican border. Fin is forced to team up with...

Two LAPD cops stumble into trouble during a search for a kidnapped dog in this “superb” New York Times bestseller from the author of Hollywood Station (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Russian-American detective A. A. Valnikov is a burned-out homicide detective who gets teamed with Natalie Zimmerman,...