Joseph Wambaugh Books In Order

Hollywood Station Books In Publication Order

  1. Hollywood Station (2006)
  2. Hollywood Crows (2008)
  3. Hollywood Moon (2009)
  4. Hollywood Hills (2010)
  5. Harbor Nocturne (2012)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The New Centurions (1970)
  2. The Blue Knight (1972)
  3. The Choirboys (1976)
  4. The Black Marble (1977)
  5. The Glitter Dome (1981)
  6. The Delta Star (1983)
  7. The Secrets of Harry Bright (1985)
  8. The Golden Orange (1990)
  9. Fugitive Nights (1992)
  10. Finnegan’s Week (1993)
  11. Floaters (1996)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Onion Field (1973)
  2. Lines and Shadows (1984)
  3. Echoes in the Darkness (1987)
  4. Blooding, The (1989)
  5. Fire Lover (2002)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Crown Crime Companion (1995)
  2. Silent Night, Deadly Night (2016)

Hollywood Station Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Joseph Wambaugh Books Overview

Hollywood Station

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.

Hollywood Crows

In Wambaugh’s gripping new audiobook about life in the country’s most sensational police force, the beloved Oracle has been replaced by thin lipped Sgt. Treacle, but the setting is the same Hollywood: ‘America‘s nut capital’ and some favorite personalities are still around.
When Nate and Bix Rumstead a supposedly upstanding cop with serious sobriety issues 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 bar owner, Ali Aziz. What Nate and Bix don’t know is that Margot’s no helpless victim: she’s setting them both up so that she can get away with the perfect murder and still stand to inherit her ex husbands’s ill won fortune. What SHE doesn’t know is that Aziz has replaced her sleeping pills with a poison. And then there’s Leonard Stillwater, a small time tweaker whose connection to Aziz is about to shoot him into the big leagues…

Complete with scams, cokeheads, petty and some not so petty crimes, Hollywood Crows offers the very best of Wambaugh: impeccable plotting, acerbic humor, and plenty of flawed but lovable characters. 2008

Hollywood Moon

There’s a saying at Hollywood station that the full moon brings out the beast rather than the best in the precinct’s citizens. One moonlit night, LAPD veteran Dana Vaughn and ‘Hollywood‘ Nate Weiss, a struggling actor turned cop, get a call about a young man who’s been attacking women. Meanwhile, two surfer cops known as Flotsam and Jetsam keep bumping into an odd, suspicious duo a smooth talking player in dreads and a crazy eyed, tattooed biker. No one suspects that all three dubious characters might be involved in something bigger, more high tech, and much more illegal. After a dizzying series of twists, turns, and chases, the cops will find they’ve stumbled upon a complex web of crime where even the criminals can’t be sure who’s conning whom.

Wambaugh once again masterfully gets inside the hearts and minds of the cops whose jobs have them constantly on the brink of danger. By turns heart wrenching, exhilarating, and laugh out loud funny, Hollywood Moon is his most thrilling and deeply affecting ride yet through the singular streets of LA.

Hollywood Hills

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 fiancee, 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.

Hollywood Hills is a raucous and dangerous roller coaster ride that showcases Joseph Wambaugh in vintage form.

The New Centurions

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 mad babble of the car radio, smell danger, trap a drug dealer, hide a secret, and most of all live with the understanding that cops are different from everyone else. But for these men, these new centurions, time is an enemy. The year is 1960. The streets are burning with rage. And before they can grow old on this job, they’ll have to fight for their lives…

The Blue Knight

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, 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 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’. 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.

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.

Joseph Wambaugh

The tough ex cop who writes the hard hitting best sellers a master storyteller whose characters are as powerful and as passionate as his plots.

The Golden Orange

California’s Gold Coast is the home of boat parades, middle aged women in bikinis, and Winnie Farlowe, a 40 year old ex cop with a strong interest in drinking. But when a beautiful and spirited three time divorce e introduces him to her world of clubs and mansions and the mystery of her father’s death he soon finds himself running for his life.

Fugitive Nights

Private investigator Breda Burrows, a sultry, tough as nails lady, convinces ex cop Lynn Cutter to guide her through the netherworld of Palm Springs, the pleasure and, it seems, murder capital of the world. NYT.

Finnegan’s Week

Seeking two truckers hauling a drum of lethal chemicals, San Diego detective Finbar Finnegan joins forces with two strong willed female cops to investigate a deadly toxic waste scam.BOMC Feat Alt. Tour.

Floaters

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 howThe 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 Harbor 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 behavior, 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 raunchyveteran cops who leap off the page Floaters is Wambaugh at the very to of his form.

The Onion Field

Hollywood. Saturday night. A broken taillight leads to a routine traffic stop. It shouldn t have changed the lives of the four men involved, but it did. The Onion Field is the frighteningly true story of a fatal collision of destinies that would lead two young cops and two young robbers to a deserted field on the outskirts of Los Angeles, towards a bizarre execution and its terrible aftermath.’A distinguished ‘factual novel.’A fascinating account of a double tragedy: one physical, the other psychological.’ Truman Capote

Lines and Shadows

Not since Joseph Wambaugh’s best selling 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.

Echoes in the Darkness

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 sad*ist who indulged in po*rno, 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.

Blooding, The

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.

From the Paperback edition.

Fire Lover

From master crime writer Joseph Wambaugh, the acclaimed author of such classics as The Onion Field and The Choirboys, comes the extraordinary true story of a firefighter who may have been, according to U.S. government profilers, ‘the most prolific American arsonist of the twentieth century.’Growing up in Los Angeles, John Orr would watch in awe as firefighters scrambled to put out blazes with seeming disregard for their own lives. One day he would become a fireman himself, and a good one. As a member of the Glendale Fire Department, he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a fire captain and one of southern California’s best known and most respected arson investigators, as well as a writer of firefighting articles and finally of a fact based novel. But there was another, unseen life, one that included many women, a need for risk, and a hunger for recognition. While Orr busted a string of petty arsonists, there was one serial criminal he could not track down. The Fire Lover used the same simple yet devastating device and was unerring in his execution. His lethal handiwork led to the death of four innocent people and countless millions of dollars worth of property damage. Homes, retail stores during business hours, fields of dry brush in stifling summer heat little was safe from his obsession to see them burn. But after years of terror and destruction, he would make a mistake. He would leave behind a precious clue that investigators would use to lead them to the true identity of the Fire Lover, to the shock and disbelief of the firefighting community. Chilling, colorful, and vivid, Fire Lover is Joseph Wambaugh at his best. He explores the making of a deviant personality, the fascinating intricacies of fire science, the uneasy relationship between firefighting and law enforcement communities, and a legal system gone haywire. Based on his trademark meticulous research, interviews, case records, and thousands of pages of court transcripts, Wambaugh fashions a powerful narrative. You will never look at fire the same way again.

The Crown Crime Companion

The Crown Crime CompanionThe Top 100 Mystery Novels Of All TimeSelected by theMystery Writers Of AmericaAnnotated by 0tto Penzler and Compiled by Mickey FriedmanFor The Crown Crime Companion, the Mystery Writers of America have compiled a list of the best 100 mystery novels of all time, as well as a list of favorites in ten categories. Fully annotated and reviewed by Otto Penzler, this list of the top 100 mysteries will be a valuable resource to fans, introducing them to new novels and reminding them about books by favorite writers they may have missed. Each of the ten category lists is introduced by a master of that category:Classics:Suspense:Hardboiled/Private Eye:Police Procedural:Espionage/Thriller:Criminal:Cozy/Traditional:Historical:Humorous:Legal/Courtroom:H.R.F. KeatingMary Higgins ClarkSue GraftonJoseph WambaughJohn GardnerRichard CondonMargaret MaronPeter LoveseyGregory McdonaldScott Turow

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