Crime & punishment & great reading

Unless you’re a police officer, you can only imagine what it’s like having a partner.

We see it portrayed in books and films, and I gather it’s something like a marriage. So when you’re starting out together – when you get assigned a new partner – it’s sort of like an arranged marriage. There’s a sniffing period, a getting-to-know-you time, and then finally, there’s a bond formed.

Or not. Sometimes it doesn’t work out.

And that’s one of the reasons we love crime fiction . . . detective novels  . . . police procedurals. By any name, they always smell as sweet. We've been in love with these books since Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment. These books are not just about bad guys and good guys. They're also about people and relationships and how human beings learn to love each other, or hate each other.

This is particularly good time for those of us who love these books. Go to your favorite local bookstore and these two will be on the front table, inviting you to read them:

Wambaugh did much to invent the modern version of this kind of novel and Connelly is one of the form’s greatest practitioners, a worthy inheritor of the traditions and grace of  Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Considering the terrible cold we’ve suffered lately, I advise you to cuddle up with these books. (Trust me. I'm a doctor.)

Let’s talk about Wambaugh first. Hollywood Moon is the third installment in his series on Hollywood Station, but the first two are not required reading before picking up the latest book. Though the books share the same cast of characters – including surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam and frustrated actor Hollywood Nate – it doesn’t matter in what order they  are read.

These novels all have a narrative arc, but the stories are told as a series of vignettes, glimpses into the alternating monotony and frenzy that is police life. During the sniffing period, two new partners sit side by side and tell each other their resumes. One turns to her partner and says, “I love your stories.”

And that’s how we feel about Wambaugh. He is so comfortable with the form that his books appear to be effortless, the supreme compliment for a writer. He makes it look easy, which means it was anything but. Wambaugh’s been publishing great crime fiction for 40 years now and seems to be peaking – in my view, at least – with the Hollywood series. And that’s something, considering he wrote The Choirboys and The Blue Knight. (Wambaugh is also gifted with non-fiction. Check out The Onion Field sometime.)

We could also say that Connelly is at some kind of peak, but we seem to say that with every new book. Like Wambaugh, he explores the mean streets of LA, where he worked for a decade as a police reporter for the Los Angeles Times. (Connelly is a Floridian, however, and had the good sense to come back home a decade ago. He lives in the Tampa Bay area.)

This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2010.