HRF Keating claims this as Wambaugh's finest work of fiction in his rundown of the best 100 works of crime and mystery; the former policeman turned author famed for his realistic portrait of the boys in blue as something less than heroic being something of a literary sensation in the 70s when coppers were still considered to be choirboys (which is infact one of Wambaugh's other titles) as opposed to flawed human beings sometimes incapable of resisting a bribe, of falsifying evidence to make their job easier and other reprehensible acts from such trusted public servants.It's a little old hat now but that's not why I only found this to be an OK read. My major problem is that Wambaugh seems to be playing it for laughs, always ready to highlight the absurd behaviour or the humour of a situation. OK, I get it, cops are people too and we all like a joke every now and then at work, but every single second of the day?! Really? It's an episodic novel, following several different types of police in LA after the murder of a high powered movie executive and Wambaugh writes with the kind of bitterness and unsubtle insights that can only come from a man who's witnessed the behaviour first hand and been screwed over by The Business.The incessant jolly boys game playing is especially disappointing after a wonderfully, brutally bleak opening chapter of a cop drinking himself to oblivion plagued by his own insecurities and failings and seriously contemplating the taste of his gun barrel. If he could have kept that attitude throughout I might have been thoroughly depressed but boy would I have enjoyed myself immensely.
I was far too young when I read this book. Sixteen year old girls should not necessarily dive into the hard, gritty, dysfunctional world Wambaugh's characters inhabit. My memories of the book, which I haven't picked up since I closed the cover on the last page almost 20 years ago, are of sharp, cold details, like the color of an old stain in a bare mattress and the acrid stench filling a small, derelict room. There snapshots from a nightmare, rendered so crisply and vividly I still remember them today.
