Word: wambaugh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When did this vast cloud of depression settle over the movies' police force? Possibly when Joseph Wambaugh quit the Los Angeles department and started writing realistic (and highly adaptable) novels about the modern lawman's unhappy lot. In any case, it is now the formula for cop movies: the detective hero is usually divorced, drinking too much and sleeping too little. Often he wonders what it all means -- running around, risking your life and not making any discernible dent in the crime rate...
...elegant as it sounds. Echoes in the Darkness and Engaged to Murder have nothing to do with Grace Kelly's relatives or rowing on the Schuylkill, although some of the characters in the story had a fortune in fantasy lives. So it is no surprise that Joseph Wambaugh, the former Los Angeles cop who writes well about the police (The Blue Knights, The Onion Field), attempts to establish a gothic mood. He associates the feeling with eastern Pennsylvania's brooding Germanic influences and forbidding estate architecture. His competition, Philadelphia Inquirer Reporter Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, prefers the interior decoration...
Establishing a strong narrative line for this Pennsylvania death trip is not easy. Old Pro Wambaugh chooses the cop's-eye view, telling much of the story as developed by the state police investigation and dispensing considerable amounts of macabre station-house humor. He is also fond of old-fashioned hard- boiled detective prose: "Bill Bradfield avoided that man like a vampire avoids sunburn," and "as predictable as a Tijuana dog race." At times his tone grows weary, as if he were thinking, "How the hell did I ever get mixed up with these wackos and patsies?" Schwartz-Nobel...
...SECRETS OF HARRY BRIGHT, Wambaugh...
...shot to death. Los Angeles Police Department Detective Sidney Blackpool bridles at taking a case far from his own turf, but he cannot resist the six-figure job promised by the boy's millionaire father, which would allow him to quit the force. As usual, ex-Policeman Joseph Wambaugh keeps the uniforms blue and the humor black. Blackpool has also lost a son, and the key witness is another graying officer, Harry Bright, who now lies in an apparently irreversible coma. Also hampering the investigation are a midget who hopes for intimate contact with large ladies, and a Palm Springs...