Product Description

If crime is the sickness, WPC Ellie Bloggs is the cure... Well, she is when she's not inside the nick, flirting with male officers, buying doughnuts for the sergeant and hacking her way through a jungle of emails, forms and government targets.

Of course, in amongst the tea-making, gossip and boyfriend trouble, real work sometimes intrudes. Luckily, as a woman, she can multi-task...switching effortlessly between gobby drunks, angry chavs and the merely bonkers. WPC Bloggs is a real-life policewoman, who occasionally arrests some very naughty people. Diary of an On-Call Girl is her hilarious, despairing dispatch from the front line of modern British lunacy.

WARNING: Contains satire, irony and traces of sarcasm.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11905 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Roll on the sequel!
"I am a woman", Bloggs reminds us self-deprecatingly and with a knowing wink - but this is a book for everyone. Wise, witty, and stingingly accurate.

Employing a recurring cast of police teammates and community misfits, WPC Bloggs anatomizes various elements of the police job. The episodic chapter structure moves between interrelated episodes and settings. For example, the "Missing" features people missing at three progressively more serious levels. "Crap Car" is particularly amusing, dealing with ongoing police enquiries from habitual callers. There's a revelatory chapter on how rape is handled at local police level: "Sex, Lies, and CCTV".

Both subjects and tone darken towards the end of the book, but comedy pervade the pacy narrative. Bloggs's unremitting sarcasm and satire are well served by the naturalistic dialogue. At times I laughed out loud, other times shouted "Oh, no!" in frustration.

Best of all, it provides insight into our postmodern society. Footling paperwork, teethgrinding phone/fax/email contacts and the soulkilling "targets" culture are things which proceed beyond the police on which Bloggs trains her perceptive lens.

The female PC David Copperfield
So funny; I sat and giggled the entire time I was reading it (i.e. in the bath, drying my hair, trying to cook - which is not easy with a book in your hand..... My partner, who is not in the police, looked at me like I had gone quite mad. She's got the ridiculousness of the job spot on. And don't think she's kidding about the bureaucratic hoops we have to jump through - she's not.

Thoroughly embarrassed me on the train...
as I sniggered loudly to myself, causing people to look at me warily from the corners of their eyes.

Whether you're into police-type stories or not, this is a very amusing book and rather a good insight into the way the police force "works". Or so I've been told. I'm not an officer, but I certainly found this enlightening.

I have a healthy respect for people who stay in the Force and battle on, despite all the madness.