Joseph Wambaugh

The New Centurions, written by Joseph Wambaugh, is a 1971 novel depicting the stresses of police work in Los Angeles, California in the early 1960s. The author wrote the novel, his first, while a working member of the Los Angeles Police Department. The novel became a film starring George C. Scott and Stacy Keach.

The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during an evening traffic stop and the subsequent murder of Officer Ian James Campbell. It was one of the most influential …

The Secrets of Harry Bright is the seventh novel written by former Los Angeles Police Department detective Joseph Wambaugh. Published in 1985, the book continues a pattern of Wambaugh crime fiction beginning with The Choirboys that uses black humor to explore the psychological effects of prolonged stress on veteran …