Wambaugh is back

Joseph Wambaugh was (I think) the original LAPD detective to turn novelist. He's certainly the biggest. His books set in and around the department—beginning in 1970 with The New Centurions and continuing through The Blue Knight, The Choirboys and others—set him off on a long career as a highly regarded crime writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Anyway, today his publisher Little, Brown announced that Wambaugh is returning to the LAPD beat for the first time in a long while. Hollywood Station, to be published near the end of the year, will be his first novel set in Los Angeles since The Delta Star in 1983.

Also back: Eve Diamond, the Los Angeles Times reporter who is a literary creation of real-life ex-Times reporter Denise Hamilton. Her newest mystery, Prisoner of Memory, will be published April 18 by Scribner. Many Los Angeles settings, especially Griffith Park, Studio City, the Russian community of West Hollywood and the Times newsroom. About reporting a story and negotiating it into print past a demanding editor, Diamond narrates:

In the end, journalism is like horse trading. You exaggerate your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, concede on points you don't care about while fighting savagely for the bottom line. And all the while you bluff like crazy.