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. Hilarious at times, heartbreaking at others, this book was likened by theNew York Daily News to a "one-two combination that leaves the reader reeling.""Let us dispel forever the notion that Mr. Wambaugh is only a former cop who happens to write books. . . . This would be tantamount to saying that Jack London was first and foremost a sailor. Mr. Wambaugh is, in fact, a writer of genuine power, style, wit and originality." -The New York Times Book Review "Wambaugh's cops, like the soldiers in Catch-22, are men and women in a frenzy, zany grotesques made that way by the outrageous nature of the things they deal with." -Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Wambaugh is] a good writer who becomes better with each successive book." -The Detroit News "Wambaugh sidesteps all the clichés." -The Baltimore SunThe son of a policeman, Joseph Wambaugh (b. 1937) began his writing career while a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. He joined the LAPD in 1960 after three years in the Marine Corps, and rose to the rank of detective sergeant before retiring to write fulltime in 1974. His first novel, The New Centurions (1971), was a quick success, drawing praise for its realistic action and intelligent characterization. He followed it up with The Blue Knight (1972), which was adapted into a feature film and allowed him to retire from the force. Since then Wambaugh has continued writing about the LAPD. He has been credited with a realistic portrayal of police officers, showing them not as superheroes but as people struggling with a difficult job, a depiction taken mainstream by the television drama Police Story, which Wambaugh helped create in the mid-1970s. Wambaugh has also written nonfiction, winning a special Edgar Award for 1974's The Onion Field, an account of the longest criminal trial in California history. His most recent novel is Hollywood Moon (2009).