Crime writer Joseph Wambaugh, many of whose books were turned into movies or TV shows, died on Feb. 28. He was 88. His best known project was probably the 1979 movie The Onion Field, based on his 1973 true-crime book (Wambaugh also scripted the film). Among his other books-turned-movies (or TV-movies) were The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, The Choirboys, The Black Marble, and The Glitter Dome. Wambaugh also created and sometimes wrote the 1970s series Police Story (not to be confused with the much funnier Police Squad!). The Marine vet joined the LAPD in 1960, serving for 14 years—his first novel, The New Centurions (1971) was a huge hit. In 2019, he told interviewer Steve Powell, “I had always loved war novels that combined comedy and tragedy, books that were funny and melancholy, like Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five. I thought that police work was the perfect job in which to indulge that approach to a novel . . . Another hard part is not letting personal biases taint the story that is finally told. No matter how I felt personally about The Onion Field killers of an LAPD officer, I gave them their point of view and told their story in their words as they told it and lived it. Neither killer complained about his portrayal except that Gregory Powell thought he was more physically attractive than I depicted him in the book, or that James Woods later portrayed him in the movie.”
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