Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Wambaugh
Wambaugh at the 2010 LA Times Festival of Books
Born	Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. (1937-01-22) January 22, 1937 (age 80) East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Genre	Mystery
Subject	Non-fiction crime Police procedural

Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. (born January 22, 1937) is a bestselling American writer known for his fictional and non-fictional accounts of police work in the United States. Several of his first novels were set in Los Angeles, California, and its surroundings, and featured Los Angeles police officers as protagonists and former police officer.

The son of a police officer, Wambaugh was born in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He joined the United States Marine Corps at age 17 (an element he works into several of his novels) and married at 18.

Wambaugh is of Irish and German descent.

Wambaugh received an Associate degree from Chaffey College and joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1960. He served 14 years, rising through the ranks from patrolman to detective sergeant. He also attended California State University, Los Angeles, where he earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees.

Wambaugh's perspective on 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. He mixed writing 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.