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.

Bumper Morgan is a cop, a patrolman with twenty years' service under his belt and retirement is looming ominously close. 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. Until the prospect of retirement clouds his judgement and Bumper finds himself starting to make mistakes. The kind of mistakes that kill people.

Joseph Wambaugh, the former LAPD detective, multiple New York Times best-seller, and MWA Grand Master, is known as the father of the modern police novel and now, in Harbor Nocturne, he has produced one of the outstanding books of the year. Some LAPD characters from the acclaimed Hollywood Station series are here: the surfer cops known as Flotsam and Jetsam, aspiring actor Hollywood Nate Weiss, and young Britney Small, along with new members of the midwatch, all gamely coping with the wackiness of Hollywood. The story begins in the southernmost Los Angeles district of San Pedro, one of the world's busiest harbors, where an unlikely pair of lovers is caught up in terror and peril through no fault of their own.
When Dinko Babich, a young longshoreman, delivers Lita Medina, a young Mexican dancer, from the harbor to a Hollywood nightclub, his life is forever changed as an unexpectedly tender and moving love story develops. Comedy and tragedy are intertwined in the everyday life of the cops and residents of San Pedro Harbor.

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. In HOLLYWOOD CROWS, Wambaugh returns once again to the beat he knows best, taking readers on a tightly plotted and darkly funny ride-along through Los Angeles with a cast of flawed cops and eccentric lowlifes they won't soon forget.

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 parlours 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.

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.

The cops of Hollywood Station are still over-worked, under-staffed, bound by red tape, hobbled by political correctness, and constantly amazed by what the boulevards can throw at them. Scratch the surface of the 'reel' Hollywood and you'll discover the 'real' Hollywood. Here, Mickey Mouse is a crack addict, Marilyn Monroe is a man and when the moon is full, the neighbourhood gets even weirder. When the legendary Oracle is replaced by Sgt. Jason 'Chickenlips' Treakle - a politically correct, paper shuffling putz with a shiny shoe fetish - Nate 'Hollywood' Weiss leaves the mid-watch to become a Crow, or Community Relations Officer (C.R.O.). These are the guys dealing with domestic disputes, busting stalkers, bouncing paparazzi and calming chronic complainers, wannabe cops and loons of all varieties. It should be easy duty - to the other cops it's 'the sissie beat' - but being Hollywood, the loons are not in short supply and not everything is at is seems. So when Hollywood Nate and fellow crow Bix Rumstead find themselves caught up with bombshell Margot Aziz, they think they're just having some fun. To them, Margot is a harmless hill bunny, stuck in the middle of an ugly divorce from a nefarious strip-club-owner. But Margot's no helpless victim: the femme fatale is setting them up so she can pull off the perfect murder and walk away with her ex-husband's ill-won fortune. But Margot isn't the only one with a deadly plan.

Two LAPD cops stumble into trouble during a search for a kidnapped dog in this "superb" New York Times bestseller from the author of Hollywood Station (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Russian-American detective A. A. Valnikov is a burned-out homicide detective who gets teamed with Natalie Zimmerman, twice-divorced with a grudge against men. These unlikely partners are assigned the strange case of a stolen show dog being held for ransom. In this bittersweet tale that the Los Angeles Times called "terrifying and romantic," the partners will find much more than they ever could have imagined. Cosmopolitan called it "fast, colorful and gripping . . . as touching as it is breathlessly entertaining."

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.

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 the months to come, they'll learn that right and wrong aren't always clearly black and white. Bad guys populate both sides of the law. Rules are subject to interpretation. Justice is slow and convoluted. And life is not fair. 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 classic novel of the LA Police They are the Choirboys - the patrol squad of the LA Police attempting to stay sane in an insane world. The Choirboys are five sets of partners on the night-watch, all 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. Simultaneously darkly funny and terrifying, this is as chillingly authentic as only a veteran police officer could make it.

A New York Times-bestselling police thriller by the author of Harbor Nocturne: Two LAPD detectives look into the murder of a Hollywood studio boss. 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."

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.

Partners in the Los Angeles Police Department, they're haunted by terrifying dark secrets of the nightwatch-shared predawn drink and sex sessions they call choir practice. Each wears his cynicism like a bulletproof jockstrap-each has his horror story, his bad dream, his night shriek. He is afraid of his friends-he is afraid of himself.

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.

"With each book, it seems, Mr. Wambaugh's skill as a writer increases . . . . In "Lines And Shadows" he gives an off-trail, action-packed true account of police work and the intimate lives of policemen that, for my money, is his best book yet."-- "The New York Times Book Review."

"A saga of courage, craziness, brutality and humor . . . . One of his best books, comparable to "The Onion Field" for storytelling and revelatory power."-- "Chicago Sun-Times"

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.