Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh Jr. (January 22, 1937 – February 28, 2025) was an American author and former Los Angeles Police Department detective-sergeant known for pioneering gritty, character-driven police novels and true-crime books. Drawing on his LAPD experience, his breakthrough works—The New Centurions, The Blue Knight and the true-crime bestseller The Onion Field—helped reinvent the police procedural and influenced succeeding generations of crime writers. Many of his books were adapted for film and television, and he was a multiple Edgar Award winner and a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.