Joseph Wambaugh books in order

Meet the Los Angeles blues—a new breed of cop. From the baby-faced rookies to hashmark heroes, they are besieged men, dealing daily with a world coming apart. Hunting killers, quelling gang wars, fighting corruption, they risk death every day . . . every night.

Joseph Wambaugh was a damn good cop and LAPD detective. For fifteen years he prowled the streets, solved murders, took his lumps. Now he’s the hard-hitting, tough-talking bestselling writer who tells the brutal, true stories of the men who risk their lives every time a siren screams.

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, and the hard respect a man can't earn anywhere else. 

Now, with a new job and a good woman waiting for him, a kinky thief terrorizing L.A.'s choice hotels, and a tragedy looming, Bumper Morgan is about to face the only thing that can scare him: the demons that he's been hiding behind his bright and shiny badge...

They are the Choirboys - the patrol squad of the LA Police attempting to stay sane in an insane world. The five sets of partners on the night-watch are men of varying temperaments and backgrounds, but they are joined together by the job and they have elected to spend their pre-dawn hours in MacArthur Park in relaxing drink and sex sessions they call 'choir practice'. This is the story of men endangered ultimately not by the violence of their jobs but by their choice of off-duty entertainment. This is a boisterous and freewheeling novel, as chillingly authentic as only a veteran police officer could make it.

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.

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.

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?

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 becomes an obsession.

For the savage beauty of the wastelands holds many secrets. Secrets that stir up Blackpool’s long-suppressed nightmares of his own son’s death. Secrets that threaten to destroy an entire police department. Secrets that, by rights, should remain forever buried by the wind in the ageless desert sands.

When forty-year-old cop Winnie Farlowe lost his shield, he lost the only protection he had. Ever since, he's been fighting a bad back, fighting the bottle, fighting his conscience. But now he's in for a special fight. Never before has he come up against anyone like Tess Binder. 

She's a stunningly beautiful, sexually spirited three-time divorcee from Newport Beach--capital of California's Golden Orange, where wallets are fat, bikinis are skimpy, and cosmetic surgery is one sure way to a billionaire's bank account. 

Nearly a year ago Tess Binder's father washed up on the beach with a bullet in his ear. The coroner called it suicide, but to Tess it means the fear of her own fate. And Winnie Farlowe is a man willing to follow wherever she leads--straight into the juicy pulp of the Golden Orange, a world where money is everything, but nothing adds up . . . where death and chicanery flourish amidst ranches, mansions, and yachting parties. In his long-awaited new novel, best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh combines harrowing suspense, scathing humor, and a moving portrait of a man on the brink of self-destruction.

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 pension, it could become a point of no return.

As a rule, Cutter wouldn’t give a private investigator the time of day, but Breda Burrows is the exception to every rule. Sultry, blue-eyed, long-legged, and tough as nails, Breda can be very convincing, and she’s convinced Cutter to be her guide through the glittering netherworld of Palm Springs—an explosive mix of silicone, Geritol, old money, and murder.

The trail begins with the monied socialite wife of a philandering husband. The wife doesn’t care about her husband’s infidelity, but she does want to know why he’s made a secret deposit—at a sperm bank. What Cutter wants to know is the identity of the strange, violent man hubby is meeting in the desert—a man known only as the fugitive.

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 women, each working a separate angle of his once-simple case.

Tough, sexy environmental cop Nell Salter is looking into a chemical spill that has set off a chain reaction of death in the barrios of Tijuana and across the border. She’s also looking for a relationship that doesn’t turn toxic. Young, fresh-faced navy detective Bobbie Ann Doggett is investigating the theft of two thousand pairs of navy flight-deck shoes—and swooning over the Olivier of the San Diego PD. Mix in a unpredictable speed-freak trucker and his sociopath boss, and the result is a toxic cocktail of drugs, corruption, sex, and murder.

Harbor cops Fortney and Leeds have a good time patrolling San Diego’s Mission Bay, scoping out body-sculpted beauties on pleasure craft, rescuing boating bozos who’ve run aground, and hauling in the occasional floater.

But now their days are anything but typical, for the America’s Cup regattas have come to town and San Diego swarms with sailors, schemers, spies, and saboteurs, and the cuppies who want to love them. It’s a randy cuppie named Blaze who tweaks their cop instincts that something’s not quite right on the waterfront—and it’s Blaze who sets off 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.

For a cop, a night on the job means killing time and trying not to get killed. If you're a cop in Hollywood Division, it also means dealing with the most overwrought, desperate, and deluded criminals anywhere. 

When you're patrolling Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, neither a good reputation nor the lessons of scandals past will help you keep your cool, your sanity, or your life when things heat up. The robbery of a Hollywood jewelry store, complete with masks and a hand grenade, quickly connects to a Russian nightclub, an undercover operation gone bloodily wrong, and a cluelessly ambitious pair of tweakers.

Putting the pieces together are the sergeant they call the Oracle and his squad of street cops. There's Budgie Polk, a twenty-something firecracker with a four-month-old at home, and Wesley Drubb, a rich boy who joined the force seeking thrills. Fausto Gamboa is the tetchy veteran, and Hollywood Nate is the one who never shuts up about movies. 

They spend their days in patrol cars and their nights in the underbelly of a city that never sleeps. From their headquarters at Hollywood Station, they see the glamour city for what it is: a field of land mines, where the mundane is dangerous and the dangerous is mundane.

When LAPD cops Hollywood Nate and Bix Rumstead find themselves caught up with bombshell Margot Aziz, they think they're just having some fun. But in Hollywood, nothing is ever what it seems. To them, Margot is a harmless socialite, stuck in the middle of an ugly divorce from the nefarious nightclub-owner Ali Aziz. What Nate and Bix don't know is that Margot's no helpless victim: the femme fatale is setting them both up. But Ms. Aziz isn't the only one with a deadly plan.

Hollywood certainly isn't your typical police precinct, but in Hollywood Moon, follow-up to Hollywood Station and Hollywood Crows, the cops of that surreal place seem called upon to deal with an even greater share of weirdness than normal. 

Drag queens in delicto flagrante behind dumpsters, dead hobos pushed around in wheelchairs, men in massage parlors receiving unspeakable injuries from Barbie dolls. That's not to say that the cops themselves don't have their own peculiarities: Hollywood Nate still dreams of movie stardom, but worries as he gets older that he's too good-looking to be a character actor. 

Then there's Aaron Sloane, forever lusting after his beautiful partner Sheila Montez, and Dana Vaughn, a tough no-nonsense cop who can't stand the fact that former chauvinist pig turned 'guardian angel' Lee Murillo won't stop following her around after she saved his life. 

But there's a darker side to all that weirdness - and when the enigmatic crook Dewey Gleason, known variously to his associates as 'Jacob Kessler' and 'Bernie Graham', hatches an audacious kidnap plan, without knowing that one of the hired help lives a double life as a serial sex attacker, things start to get very dangerous indeed.

The legendary Hollywood Hills are home to wealth, fame, and power -- passing through the neighborhood, it's hard not to get a little greedy.

LAPD veteran "Hollywood Nate" Weiss could take or leave the opulence, but he wouldn't say no to onscreen fame. He may get his shot when he catches the appreciative eye of B-list director Rudy Ressler, and his troublemaking fiancée, Leona Brueger, the older-but-still-foxy widow of a processed-meat tycoon. Nate tries to elude her crafty seductions, but consents to keep an eye on their estate in the Hollywood Hills while they're away.

Also minding the mansion is Raleigh Dibble, a hapless ex-con trying to put the past behind him. Raleigh is all too happy to be set up for the job -- as butler-cum-watchdog -- by Nigel Wickland, Leona's impeccably dressed art dealer. What Raleigh doesn't realize is that under the natty clothes and posh accent, Nigel has a nefarious plan: two paintings hanging on the mansion's walls will guarantee them more money than they've ever seen.

Everyone's dreams are just within reach -- the only problem is, this is Hollywood. A circle of teenage burglars that the media has dubbed The Bling Ring has taken to pillaging the homes of Hollywood celebutants like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and when a pair of drug-addled young copycats stumbles upon Nigel's heist, that's just the beginning of the disaster to come. Soon Hollywood Nate, surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam, and the rest of the team at Hollywood Station have a deadly situation on their hands.

In the southernmost Los Angeles district of San Pedro, one of the world’s busiest harbors, an unlikely pair of lovers are unwittingly caught between the two warring sides of the law. When Dinko Babich, a young longshoreman, delivers Lita Medina, a young Mexican dancer, from the harbor to a Hollywood nightclub, theirs lives are forever changed, as their love develops among the myriad cops and criminals who occupy the harbor. 

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.

The true story only Joseph Wambaugh could tell. A band of California cops set loose in no-man’s-land to come home heroes. Or come home dead.

Not since Joseph Wambaugh’s bestselling The Onion Field has there been a true police story as fascinating, as totally gripping as Lines and Shadows. The media hailed them as heroes. Others denounced them as lawless renegades. A squad of tough cops called the Border Crime Task Force. A commando team sent to patrol the snake-infested no-man’s-land south of San Diego. Not to apprehend the thousands of illegal aliens slipping into the U.S., but to stop the ruthless bandits who preyed on them nightly—relentlessly robbing, raping, and murdering defenseless men, women, and children.

The task force plan was simple. They would disguise themselves as illegal aliens. They would confront the murderous shadows of the night. Yet each time they walked into the violent blackness along the border, they came closer to another boundary line—a fragile line within each man. And crossing it meant destroying their sanity and their lives.

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 he was principal of Upper Merion High School where Susan Reinert taught. 

 At night he was a sadist who indulged in porno, drugs, and weapons. William Bradfield--He was a bearded and charismatic English teacher and classics scholar, but his real genius was for juggling women--three at a time. One of those women was Susan Reinert. How these two men are connected, how the brilliant murder was carried off, and how the investigators closed this astounding case makes for Wambaugh's most compelling book yet.

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 only a stone's throw from where Lynda was so brutally murdered. But it will take four years, a scientific breakthrough, the largest manhunt in British crime annals, and the blooding of more than four thousand men before the real killer is found.

The hunt for the most prolific American arsonist of the twentieth century...

Growing up in Los Angeles, John Orr idolized law enforcement. However, after being rejected by both the LAPD and LAFD, he settled for a position with the Glendale Fire Department. There, he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a fire captain and one of Southern California’s best-known and most respected arson investigators. But Orr led another, unseen life, one that included womanizing and an insatiable thirst for recognition.

While Orr busted a slew of petty arsonists, there was one serial criminal he could not track down. Nothing was safe from the so-called Pillow Pyro’s obsession. Homes, retail stores, and fields of dry brush all went up in flames. His handiwork led to millions of dollars worth of property damage and the deaths of four innocent bystanders. But after years of evading the police, he made a mistake—one that would turn Orr’s life upside down.

Four novels in one volume:

The Blue Knight

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, and the hard respect a man can't earn anywhere else.

Now, with a new job and a good woman waiting for him, a kinky thief terrorizing L.A.'s choice hotels, and a tragedy looming, Bumper Morgan is about to face the only thing that can scare him: the demons that he's been hiding behind his bright and shiny badge...

The Black Marble

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.

The New Centurions

Meet the Los Angeles blues—a new breed of cop. From the baby-faced rookies to hashmark heroes, they are besieged men, dealing daily with a world coming apart. Hunting killers, quelling gang wars, fighting corruption, they risk death every day...every night.

Joseph Wambaugh was a damn good cop and LAPD detective. For fifteen years he prowled the streets, solved murders, took his lumps. Now he’s the hard-hitting, tough-talking bestselling writer who tells the brutal, true stories of the men who risk their lives every time a siren screams.

The Choirboys

They are the Choirboys - the patrol squad of the LA Police attempting to stay sane in an insane world. The five sets of partners on the night-watch are men of varying temperaments and backgrounds, but they are joined together by the job and they have elected to spend their pre-dawn hours in MacArthur Park in relaxing drink and sex sessions they call 'choir practice'.

Hollywood Station

While the cops out of Hollywood Station deal with the costumed crackheads, prostitutes, purse snatchers, tweakers and everyday lunatics that haunt the boulevards, in the streets behind the lights and crowds, the real Los Angeles simmers, never far from boiling point. 

The New Centurions

The story of five years in the lives of three policemen, from boot camp to the bitter realities of patrolling the streets of Los Angeles 

The Blue Knight

Bumper Morgan is a cop with twenty years' service under his belt and retirement looming. His outlook is old-fashioned: he believes in justice - even when it doesn't conform to the letter of the law. If a judicious bit of violence will give him what he needs to solve a crime, so be it. That's the way the game's played. And it usually works. But the prospect of retirement is clouding Bumper's judgement and he finds himself making mistakes. The kind of mistakes that kill people.