The Entertainment Critic Book Review: Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh

Hollywood Crows

THE ENTERTAINMENT CRITIC BOOK REVIEW, BY JAMES MYERS
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HOLLYWOOD CROWS
By Joseph Wambaugh
Published by: Little, Brown & Company
Publication Date: March, 2008
Price: $26.99
343 Pages
ISBN-13: 9780316025287
Four Star Rating ****

JOSEPH ALOYSIUS WAMBAUGH, JR. (BORN JANUARY 22, 1937, IN EAST PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA) IS AN AMERICAN WRITER KNOWN FOR HIS FICTIONAL AND NON-FICTIONAL ACCOUNTS OF POLICE WORK IN THE UNITED STATES.

SERVED 14 YEARS IN THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT

WAMBAUGH'S UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON THE REALITIES OF POLICE WORK LED TO HIS FIRST NOVEL, THE NEW CENTURIONS, WHICH WAS PUBLISHED EARLY IN 1971 TO CRITICAL ACCLAIM AND POPULAR SUCCESS. THE SUCCESS OF THE EARLY BOOKS HAPPENED WHILE WAMBAUGH WAS STILL WORKING IN THE DETECTIVE DIVISION. HE REPORTEDLY REMARKED "I WOULD HAVE GUYS IN HANDCUFFS ASKING ME FOR AUTOGRAPHS." SOON TURNING TO WRITING FULL-TIME, WAMBAUGH WAS PROLIFIC AND POPULAR STARTING IN THE 1970S, MIXING NOVELS (THE BLUE KNIGHT, THE CHOIRBOYS, THE BLACK MARBLE) WITH NONFICTION ACCOUNTS OF CRIME AND DETECTION A.K.A. "TRUE CRIME" (THE ONION FIELD). LATER BOOKS INCLUDED THE GLITTER DOME (A TV-MOVIE ADAPTATION STARRED JAMES GARNER AND JOHN LITHGOW), THE DELTA STAR, AND LINES AND SHADOWS.

HIS TRADEMARK IS GRITTY POLICE CHARACTERS THAT HAVE HEROIC FLAWS

MANY OF HIS BOOKS WERE MADE INTO FEATURE FILMS OR TV-MOVIES DURING THE 70S AND 80S. THE BLUE KNIGHT, A NOVEL FOLLOWING THE APPROACHING RETIREMENT AND LAST WORKING DAYS OF AGING VETERAN BEAT COP "BUMPER" MORGAN, WAS MADE INTO AN EMMY-WINNING 1973 TV MINISERIES STARRING WILLIAM HOLDEN AND LATER A SHORT-LIVED TV SERIES STARRING GEORGE KENNEDY. HIS REALISTIC APPROACH TO POLICE DRAMA WAS HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL IN BOTH FILM AND TELEVISION DEPICTIONS (SUCH AS HILL STREET BLUES) FROM THE MID-70S ONWARD.

WAMBAUGH WAS ALSO INVOLVED WITH CREATING/DEVELOPING THE NBC SERIES POLICE STORY, WHICH RAN FROM 1973 TO 1977. THE ANTHOLOGY SHOW COVERED THE DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF POLICE WORK (PATROL, DETECTIVE, UNDERCOVER, ETC.) IN THE LAPD WITH STORY IDEAS AND CHARACTERS SUPPOSEDLY INSPIRED BY OFF-THE-RECORD TALKS WITH ACTUAL POLICE OFFICERS. AT TIMES THE SHOW'S CHARACTERS ALSO DEALT WITH PROBLEMS NOT USUALLY SEEN OR ASSOCIATED WITH TYPICAL TV COP SHOWS, SUCH AS ALCOHOL ABUSE, ADULTERY, AND BRUTALITY. THE SHOW HAD A BRIEF REVIVAL ON ABC DURING THE 1988-1989 SEASON.

WAMBAUGH WAS ALSO INVOLVED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THE ACCLAIMED FILM VERSIONS OF THE ONION FIELD (1979) AND THE BLACK MARBLE (1980), BOTH DIRECTED BY HAROLD BECKER. IN 1981, HE WON AN EDGAR AWARD FROM THE MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA FOR HIS SCREENPLAY FOR THE LATTER FILM. THIS WAS AFTER THE CHOIRBOYS FILM ADAPTATION HAD MET WITH VERY POOR CRITICAL AND AUDIENCE RECEPTION A FEW YEARS EARLIER. INTERESTINGLY, ALL THREE FILMS FEATURED PERFORMANCES BY THEN YOUNG UP-AND-COMING ACTOR JAMES WOODS.

ONE OF WAMBAUGH'S MOST FAMOUS NONFICTION BOOKS IS THE BLOODING, WHICH TELLS THE STORY BEHIND HOW AN EARLY LANDMARK CASE INVOLVING DNA FINGERPRINTING HELPED SOLVE TWO MURDERS IN LEICESTER, ENGLAND, RESULTING IN THE ARREST AND CONVICTION OF COLIN PITCHFORK.

IN 2003, FIRE LOVER: A TRUE STORY BROUGHT WAMBAUGH HIS SECOND EDGAR AWARD, FOR BEST CRIME FACT BOOK, AND IN 2004 HE WAS THE RECIPIENT OF AN MWA GRAND MASTER AWARD. HE RETURNED TO FICTION WITH HOLLYWOOD STATION (2006), HIS FIRST BOOK DEPICTING LIFE IN THE LAPD SINCE THE DELTA STAR (1983). HOLLYWOOD STATION WAS HIGHLY CRITICAL OF CONDITIONS CAUSED BY THE FEDERAL CONSENT DECREE UNDER WHICH THE LAPD HAD TO OPERATE AFTER THE RAMPART SCANDAL.

IN THE 2000S, WAMBAUGH ALSO BEGAN TEACHING SCREENWRITING COURSES AS A GUEST LECTURER FOR THE THEATER DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO.

"Dude, you better drop that long knife," the tall, suntanned cop said. At Hollywood Station they called him "Flotsam" by virtue of his being a surfing enthusiast.

His shorter partner, also with a major tan, hair even more suspiciously blond and sun streaked, dubbed "Jetsam" for the same reason, said, sotto voce, "Bro, that ain't a knife. That's a bayonet, in case you can't see too good. And why didn't you check out a Taser and a bean-bag gun from the kit room, is what I'd like to know. That's what the DA's office and FID are gonna ask if we have to light him up. Like, 'Why didn't you officers use nonlethal force?' Like, 'Why'd that Injun have to bite the dust when you coulda captured him alive?' That's what they'll say."

"I thought you checked them out and put them in the trunk. You walked toward the kit room."

"No, I went to the john. And you were too busy ogling Ronnie to know where I was at," Jetsam said. "Your head was somewheres else. You gotta keep your mind in the game, bro."

Everyone on the midwatch at Hollywood Station knew that Jetsam had a megacrush on Officer Veronica "Ronnie" Sinclair and got torqued when Flotsam or anybody else flirted with her. In any case, both surfer cops considered it sissified to carry a Taser on their belts.

Referring to section 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, which all cops used to describe a mental case, Flotsam whispered, "Maybe this fifty-one-fifty's trashed on PCP, so we couldn't taze him anyways. He'd swat those darts outta him like King Kong swatted the airplanes. So just chill. He ain't even giving us the stink eye. He just maybe thinks he's a wooden Indian or something."

"Or maybe we're competing with a bunch of other voices he's hearing and they're scarier," Jetsam observed. "Maybe we're just echoes."

They'd gotten nowhere by yelling the normal commands to the motionless Indian, a stooped man in his early forties, only a decade older than they were but with a haggard face, beaten down by life. And while the cops waited for the backup they'd requested, they'd begun speaking to him in quiet voices, barely audible in the unlit alley over the traffic noise on Melrose Avenue. It was there that 6-X-46 had chased and cornered him, a few blocks from Paramount Studios, from where the code 2 call had come.

The Indian had smashed a window of a boutique to steal a plus-size gold dress with a handkerchief hemline and a red one with an empire waist. He'd squeezed into the red dress and walked to the Paramount main gate, where he'd started chanting gibberish and, perhaps prophetically, singing "Jailhouse Rock" before demanding admittance from a startled security officer who had dialed 9-1-1.

"These new mini-lights ain't worth a shit," Jetsam said, referring to the small flashlights that the LAPD bought and issued to all officers ever since a widely viewed videotaped arrest showed an officer striking a combative black suspect with his thirteen-inch aluminum flashlight, which caused panic in the media and in the police commission and resulted in the firing of the Latino officer.

After this event, new mini-flashlights that couldn't cause harm to combative suspects unless they ate them were ordered and issued to new recruits. Everything was fine with the police commission and the cop critics except that the high-intensity lights set the rubber sleeves on fire and almost incinerated a few rookies before the Department recalled all of those lights and ordered these new ten-ouncers.

Jetsam said, "Good thing that cop used flashlight therapy instead of smacking the vermin with a gun. We'd all be carrying two-shot derringers by now."

Flotsam's flashlight seemed to better illuminate the Indian, who stood staring up white-eyed at the starless smog-shrouded sky, his back to the graffiti-painted wall of a two-story commercial building owned by Iranians, leased by Vietnamese. The Indian may have chosen the red dress because it matched his flip-flops. The gold dress lay crumpled on the asphalt by his dirt-encrusted feet, along with the cut-offs he'd been wearing when he'd done the smash-and-grab.

So far, the Indian hadn't threatened them in any way. He just stood like a statue, his breathing shallow, the bayonet held down against his bare left thigh, which was fully exposed. He'd sliced the slit in the red dress clear up to his flank, either for more freedom of movement or to look more provocative.

"Dude," Flotsam said to the Indian, holding his Glock nine in the flashlight beam so the Indian could observe that it was pointed right at him, "I can see that you're spun out on something. My guess is you been doing crystal meth, right? And maybe you just wanted an audition at Paramount and didn't have any nice dresses to wear to it. I can sympathize with that too. I'm willing to blame it on Oscar de la Renta or whoever made the fucking things so alluring. But you're gonna have to drop that long knife now or pretty soon they're gonna be drawing you in chalk on this alley."

Jetsam, whose nine was also pointed at the ponytailed Indian, whispered to his partner, "Why do you keep saying long knife to this zombie instead of bayonet?"

"He's an Indian," Flotsam whispered back. "They always say long knife in the movies."

"That refers to us white men!" Jetsam said. "We're the fucking long knives!"

"Whatever," said Flotsam. "Where's our backup, anyhow? They coulda got here on skateboards by now."

When Flotsam reached tentatively for the pepper-spray canister on his belt, Jetsam said, "Uncool, bro. Liquid Jesus ain't gonna work on a meth-monster. It only works on cops. Which you proved the time you hit me with act-right spray instead of the 'roided-up primate I was doing a death dance with."

"You still aggro over that?" Flotsam said, remembering how Jetsam had writhed in pain after getting the blast of OC spray full in the face while they and four other cops swarmed the hallucinating body-builder who was paranoid from mixing recreational drugs with steroids. "Shit happens, dude. You can hold a grudge longer than my ex-wife."

In utter frustration, Jetsam