"Joseph Wambaugh, the former LAPD detective, multiple New York Times best-seller, and MWA Grand Master, is known as “the father of the modern police novel” and now, in Harbor Nocturne, he has produced one of the outstanding books of the year. Some LAPD characters from the acclaimed Hollywood Station series are here: the surfer cops known as “Flotsam and Jetsam”, aspiring actor “Hollywood Nate” Weiss, and young Britney Small, along with new members of the midwatch, all gamely coping with the wackiness of Hollywood. The story begins in the southernmost Los Angeles district of San Pedro, one of the world’s busiest harbors, where an unlikely pair of lovers is caught up in terror and peril through no fault of their own." The quote is taken from Amazon. Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh 560 pages published by Mysterious Press.

It took me over a year to get this book. Finally! This is the fourth book in the Hollywood series with some of the same characters. Why do I love Wambaugh books? Because they are written by an ex-cop about cops and like in real life, there are times when the books are laugh-out-loud funny and times when they are too sad to bear. Because Wambaugh never loses sight of the fact that 80% of crimes are solved by accident and coincidence and his cops are not super-sleuth heroes, just normal everyday cops. Because his best books are nonfiction true-life dramas like The Onion Field, Fire Lover and The Blooding which tells how the British police used DNA for the first time to trap a serial killer. Because The Choirboys made me laugh out loud while reading the book until the last few pages which made me cry. Because I could not stop thinking about The Onion Field for days because the terror was so real. Because the Hollywood series demonstrates that just plain weird people become cops. They are lazy, afraid, too dumb to be afraid, ambitious, trying to stay alive and sometimes dedicated...just like the rest of us.