Joseph Wambaugh, the novelist who revolutionized how police were portrayed in fiction, died Feb. 28 at age 88. And Wambaugh, who lived most of his life in Southern California, got some of his ...

Joseph Wambaugh, who has died aged 88, was a former Los Angeles detective who in the 1970s became a bestselling author of grim and gritty books about the police such as The Onion Field (1973) and ...

(The novel was adapted into a 1972 film starring George C. Scott and Stacy Keach.) His next books, including “The Blue Knight” (1972) and “The Choirboys” (1976), also took aim at the good-guy image of ...