Product Description

They are the Choirboys - the patrol squad of the LA Police attempting to stay sane in an insane world. The five sets of partners on the night-watch are men of varying temperaments and backgrounds, but they are joined together by the job and they have elected to spend their pre-dawn hours in MacArthur Park in relaxing drink and sex sessions they call 'choir practice'. This is the story of men endangered ultimately not by the violence of their jobs but by their choice of off-duty entertainment. This is a boisterous and freewheeling novel, as chillingly authentic as only a veteran police officer could make it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #369096 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
14 years with LAPD. Author of NEW CENTURIONS, THE BLUE KNIGHT, THE ONION FIELD among others.

Customer Reviews

So good you can taste the coffee and donuts.
A book James Ellroy describes, as 'Magnificent' can only be a winner. It reminded me of Catch -22, as the darkest of humour is used to cut open and expose the folly of human behaviour; and mercilessly sends up senior officers. As Baxter Slate is fond of saying in the book - 'most people don't have the dignity to be evil'.

The story chronicles the lives of ten LAPD patrolmen in the mid-seventy's, with backgrounds that range from Vietnam veteran to Mormon. They don't particularly like each other, but are forced to relay on one an other by the shocking nature of their work.

The narrative is told as a series of inter-relating stories that converge on a shooting during 'Choir practise'. Which is a type of group therapy. It involves going to the park after a particularly bad day, to get horrendously drunk and make out with 'Stationhouse Groupies'.

The book doesn't pull any punches as it talks about the day to day lives of the patrolmen who deal with rape, murder, suicide and child abuse as a matter of course.

This ultimately has a devastating affect on the patrolmen. In a dangerous occupation the worst threat to their lives is from themselves, suicide being the highest cause of death to policemen. Choir practise becomes their main way to relax and express they're feelings, this strategy ultimately fails and leads to disaster.

Joining the chorus
This is a book you'll never forget, and it seems a bit churlish not awarding it 5 stars. Although the central characters are sharply drawn--no reader will ever forget "Spermwhale Whalen" or "Roscoe Rules"--some of the others are so indistinct that they fade into the background. But the major problem is that the denouement, powerful as it is, loses a lot of its force because we don't really know exactly what drove the characters to act as they did.

However, all the usual Wambaugh ingredients are there. No one does black comedy better. As a novel, it is loosely structured, and it's a testimony to the power of his writing that you keep turning the pages. Most of the book is little more than a collection of anecdotes which are almost certainly loosely adapted from his own days in the LA police force. His cops are all fornicating, foul-mouthed drunks who cadge meals and booze off LA's innocent merchants, and often they are staggeringly inept and amateurish. They are by turns brutal, and surprisingly understanding of human fraility.

Yet at the end of the book, when the "choir practices" (drunken orgies in MacArthur park) come to an end, the sanctimonious words of a senior policeman enrage us. Like so many modern professional 'managers', these lieutenants and captains have been parachuted in from above, and they have no experience of the activity they manage. The senior cops have no idea what it is like to face the horror and depravity created by psychopaths and murderers; or how it warps ordinary coppers' lives so much that they make lousy husbands and fathers, and so often commit suicide.

As much as we sympathise with Wambaugh's cops, we know that before we read this book, we would agree with the above-cited senior officer--we would have joined in his condemnation of cops who drink, whore, and use their badges to get freebees. And if Wambaugh doesn't makes you feel a bit ashamed of yourself, then shame on you.

Walk the walk
Blisteringly funny and heart-rendingly powerful, this the authentic voice of the LAPD foot soldiers. Bitter, sardonic and engrossing, Wambaugh brings us the sights, sounds and smells of the LA underwolrd as glimpsed by his disenfranchised centurions.

Hilarious and deeply moving, the book grips from the very outset and doesn't let go until its bleak denounement. The characters and their blasted world continue to haunt my conciousness long after turning the last page.