Joseph Wambaugh Libri

Un uomo in fuga nel deserto di Palm Springs. Eludente, minaccioso e imprendibile

In "Impronta di sangue" ("The Blooding", 1989) il tema è fornito dalla scoperta, da parte dell'inglese Alee Jeffreys, del modello genetico, cioè delle particolari caratteristiche del DNA, diverse da individuo a individuo e assolutamente irripetibili. Da una goccia di sangue o di sperma è divenuto così possibile risalire all'identità di una persona, con un grado di sicurezza tale da rendere obsoleto il tradizionale metodo delle impronte digitali. Si può ricorrere al "fingerprinting" genetico per stabilire la compatibilità ereditaria, la tipologia dei gemelli, ma anche per scoprire un assassino. Di questa insolita collaborazione tra genetica e codice penale, Wambaugh ci offre un esempio da manuale, ricavato dagli annali giudiziari della corte inglese.

Hollywood Station: While the cops out of Hollywood Station deal with the costumed crackheads, prostitutes, purse snatchers, tweakers and everyday lunatics that haunt the boulevards, in the streets behind the lights and crowds, the real Los Angeles simmers, never far from boiling point. The New Centurions: The story of five years in the lives of three policemen, from boot camp to the bitter realities of patrolling the streets of Los Angeles The Blue Knight: Bumper Morgan is a cop with twenty years' service under his belt and retirement looming. His outlook is old-fashioned: he believes in justice - even when it doesn't conform to the letter of the law. If a judicious bit of violence will give him what he needs to solve a crime, so be it. That's the way the game's played. And it usually works. But the prospect of retirement is clouding Bumper's judgement and he finds himself making mistakes. The kind of mistakes that kill people.

When forty-year-old cop Winnie Farlowe lost his  shield, he lost the only protection he had. Ever  since, he's been fighting a bad back, fighting the  bottle, fighting his conscience. But now he's in  for a special fight. Never before has he come up  against anyone like Tess Binder. She's a  stunningly beautiful, sexually spirited three-time  divorcee from Newport Beach--capital of California's  Golden Orange, where wallets are fat, bikinis are  skimpy, and cosmetic surgery is one sure way to a  billionaire's bank account. Nearly a year ago Tess  Binder's father washed up on the beach with a bullet  in his ear. The coroner called it suicide, but to  Tess it means the fear of her own fate. And  Winnie Farlowe is a man willing to follow wherever she  leads--straight into the juicy pulp of the Golden  Orange, a world where money is everything, but  nothing adds up . . . where death and chicanery  flourish amidst ranches, mansions, and yachting  parties. In his long-awaited new novel, best-selling  author Joseph Wambaugh combines harrowing suspense,  scathing humor, and a moving portrait of a man on  the brink of  self-destruction.

Wambaugh returns to the beat he knows best, taking readers on a tightly plotted and darkly funny ride through Los Angeles's epicentre with a cast of flawed cops and eccentric lowlifes they won't soon forget.

This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one march night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.

The story of ten cops working the nightwatch out of Wiltshire Division in Los Angeles. Off duty they attend choir practice, a euphemism for the orgies of drink, food and sex that help them to escape the emotional torture of police work.

Chronicles the first homicide cases to be solved by DNA testing: the 1983 and 1986 rape-murders of English teenagers Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashforth.