1. Joseph Wambaugh won three Edgar Awards, and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
21 Facts About Joseph Wambaugh
1. 2.
Joseph Wambaugh's family moved to Fontana, California, when he was a teenager.
3.
Joseph Wambaugh graduated from Chaffey High School in Ontario, California.
4.
Joseph Wambaugh joined the US Marine Corps at age 17 and married Dee Allsup at 18.
5.
Joseph Wambaugh served for 14 years, rising from patrolman to detective sergeant.
6.
Joseph Wambaugh attended Cal State Los Angeles, where he earned BA and MA degrees.
7.
Joseph Wambaugh later quipped that suspects would ask for his autograph.
8.
Soon turning to writing full time, Joseph Wambaugh was prolific and popular starting in the 1970s.
9.
Joseph Wambaugh mixed writing novels with nonfiction accounts of crime and detection : The Onion Field.
10.
In contrast to conventionally heroic fictional policemen, Joseph Wambaugh brought a gritty texture to his flawed police characters.
11.
Joseph Wambaugh became sharply critical of the command structure of the LAPD and individuals within it, and later, of the city government as well.
12.
Joseph Wambaugh was a sharp observer of locations where he lived as a current celebrity himself.
13.
In 1992, Joseph Wambaugh generated controversy with his nonfiction book Echoes in the Darkness, based on the murder of Susan Reinert, a teacher in the Upper Merion School District in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
14.
One of Joseph Wambaugh's most known nonfiction books is The Blooding, which tells the story behind an early landmark case in which DNA fingerprinting helped solve two murders in Leicester, England.
15.
In 2006, Joseph Wambaugh returned to fiction with the publication of Hollywood Station, set in the summer of 2006.
16.
Joseph Wambaugh retired from writing afterward, saying in 2020 he was "too old" to author another book.
17.
The incidents in which the various police characters are involved are based in part on anecdotes Joseph Wambaugh collects from working police officers.
18.
Joseph Wambaugh made a brief appearance in the pilot as a desk sergeant.
19.
Joseph Wambaugh appeared in his second brief acting role in the second-season episode "Incident in the Kill Zone".
20.
Joseph Wambaugh wrote the screenplay for the film versions of The Onion Field and The Black Marble, both directed by Harold Becker.
21.
Joseph Wambaugh died from esophageal cancer at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, on February 28,2025, at the age of 88.