Los Angeles has always been a fertile ground for growing cops
who become writers. For example, it's worth noting, in the
wake of the debut of the latest STAR TREK series, for
example, that Gene Roddenberry, then an LAPD sergeant, got
his start as a screenwriter putting together screen
treatments of real-life cases for DRAGNET. Since I'm a
cop-writer myself I thought that, in keeping with this
month's theme I'd mention a few of them.
LESLIE WHITE The earliest example I've found of a LA area cop
who broke into fiction. He started out as a deputy sheriff in
one of the rural counties surrounding LA, then became a DA's
Investigator for LA County. He wrote a book of non-fiction
memoirs, ME DETECTIVE, and also wrote a number of short
stories about LA cops, both for the pulps and for slicks like
COLLIER'S. He wrote two full-length cop novels, HARNESS BULL
and HOMICIDE in the late '30s. From that point on, he dropped
crime fiction altogether and stuck to other genres. It's been
suggested that a real-life case that White worked (and wrote
about in his autobiography) was the inspiration for the
long-forgotten case Phil Marlowe cites in THE HIGH WINDOW,
when he's explaining to two LAPD detectives why he doesn't
trust cops.
GORDON GORDON That's really his name. He never actually
worked in law enforcement in the LA area. His three year
stint in the FBI during WW2 was served in Chicago. But he and
his wife, Mildred, moved to Southern California where they
collaborated on over a dozen suspense novels. Their most
frequently used series character, FBI Agent John Ripley,
though he started out as a Chicagoan in the early '50s, was
stationed in LA during his last two cases, OPERATION TERROR
(1962) and THE INFORMANT (1972). The Gordons also wrote about
local LA cops in THE CASE OF THE TALKING BUG (1955) and THE
BIG FRAME (1957).
BERT HITCHENS A Southern Pacific Railroad Police detective
who was married to successful mystery writer Dolores
Hitchens.
He collaborated with her on a series of five novels
featuring various members of the Railroad Police Department's
LA contingent, beginning with F.O.B. MURDER (1955). These
have always resonated with me because my grandfather, the
first member of my family to enter law enforcement, was an SP
cop. Interestingly, the Hitchens managed to successfully put
together a "corporate" cop hero a full year before McBain's
first 87th Precinct book.
JOHN BALL An Edgar-winner for IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, the
first book about Virgil Tibbs, black man and homicide expert
in the suburban force of Pasadena. Ball found the police work
he researched for his novels so fascinating that he decided
to become a policeman himself. He joined the LA County
Sheriff's Office as a reserve deputy. His best book, the
posthumously published TH VAN, is about the search for a pair
of serial killers by the LASO's Homicide Division.
WILLIAM CAMP A deputy in the LA County Sheriff's Office, he's
written two cop novels, NIGHT BEAT, about a rookie's first
patrol shift, and THE JACOBS PARK KILLINGS about a murder
investigation that uncovers a corrupt police force. The
locales are given fictional names like
"Sedona County," but it's clearly LA County he's writing
about.
JESS KIMBROUGH A black man who entered the LAPD as a reserve
officer in 1915 and retired in 1939 as a detective
lieutenant
(lieutenant was as high as black man could get at that time).
In 1969, at the age of 77, Kimbrough's first
(and as far as I can tell, only) crime novel DEFENDER OF THE
ANGELS was published. It was a fictionalized account of his
LAPD career. It's been out-of-print for years but a small,
specialty publisher, Blue Line Press, just brought out a new
edition. I've never read it, but the subject matter, an
honest, black cop in a police force that was, at the time,
notoriously corrupt and notoriously racist, seems
sure-fire.
JOSEPH WAMBAUGH The godfather of cop-novelists, at least in
the US
(writers like Maurice Procter or John Wainwright might claim
that title across the pond). He was a detective sergeant in
LAPD's Hollenbeck station when his first novel, THE NEW
CENTURIONS, hit the best-seller list. He followed it up with
novels like THE BLUE KNIGHT and THE CHOIRBOYS, and
non-fiction books like THE ONION FIELD and LINES AND
SHADOWS.
This post is getting long, so I'll talk about LA-area
cop-writers who followed Wambaugh another time.
JIM DOHERTY
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