A group of police officers convene an unofficial support group/drunken bacchanal in the park at Echo Lake where they vent about their job as police officers.Įach chapter focuses on a pair of officers and the things that occur on their shifts. This is the 1970’s and sexism, free love and political incorrectness runs rife. It is definitely a snapshot in time and given everything that has come out about the LAPD since it was written, it really speaks to the culture that existed in the past. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.I read this book years ago when it first came out. Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Among Wambaugh’s other novels of the police world are The Black Marble (1978) and The Secrets of Harry Bright (1985).

It was filmed in 1977, starring Charles Durning and Perry King. This is a first-rate novel that goes several steps beyond the standard police procedural.

And when tragedy finally befalls them, the only surprise is that it hasn’t happened sooner. With frequent black humor, Wambaugh shows us both the strengths and weaknesses of his characters, as well as the daily strains, sordidness, and departmental hypocrisy with which they must cope. We come to know intimately such characters as Roscoe Rules, the meanest and probably most despicable man in the precinct Aaron Mobley, a twenty-five-year-old alcoholic who somehow still manages to function on the job Francis Tanaguchi, a Nisei who feels more Mexican than Japanese Spermwhale Whalen, a veteran cop who has a big stake in making it to his twenty-year retirement date Sam Niles and Howard Bloomguard, physical opposites who nonetheless complement one another as partners Spencer Van Moot, who can wangle a “freebie” out of any merchant he meets Baxter Slate, whose “different” quality is hard for his fellow cops to pin down. Wambaugh then goes into flashback and takes us through the months prior to this final choir practice, introducing us to the participants, allowing us to glimpse their routine - and not-so-routine - tours of duty. We are told that a tragedy has taken place during one of these sessions and that a young man has been shot to death. The scene then shifts to Los Angeles nearly ten years later The “choirboys” are a group of policemen who attend “choir practice” - otherwise known as drinking binges - in MacArthur Park after going off night duty. Although we do not learn their identities until much later in the book, we can surmise that this incident provides the fuel for future tragedy.

Two unnamed marines have taken shelter there from the enemy, and one of them suffers a severe emotional break. The powerful opening of this novel takes place in a cave in Vietnam in 1967. Film: Lorimar, 1978 screenwriter: Christopher Knopf director: Robert Aldrich.

The choirboys joseph wambaugh