Specify Books Toward The Choirboys
| Original Title: | The Choirboys |
| ISBN: | 0752851314 (ISBN13: 9780752851310) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | American Law Enforcement |
| Setting: | Los Angeles, California,1975(United States) |
Joseph Wambaugh
Paperback | Pages: 368 pages Rating: 4.06 | 4830 Users | 172 Reviews
Point Of Books The Choirboys
| Title | : | The Choirboys |
| Author | : | Joseph Wambaugh |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Crime masterworks #10 |
| Pages | : | Pages: 368 pages |
| Published | : | April 18th 2002 by Orion (first published 1975) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Mystery. Crime. Thriller. Mystery Thriller |
Description Conducive To Books The Choirboys
Partners in the Los Angeles Police Department, they’re haunted by terrifying dark secrets of the nightwatch–shared predawn drink and sex sessions they call choir practice. Each wears his cynicism like a bulletproof jockstrap–each has his horror story, his bad dream, his night shriek. He is afraid of his friends–he is afraid of himself.Rating Of Books The Choirboys
Ratings: 4.06 From 4830 Users | 172 ReviewsCrit Of Books The Choirboys
James Ellroy, who incidentally provides a great introduction to the book cited this as an inspiration and had my interest piqued. But nothing could have prepared me for The Choirboys. It is simultaneously one of the funniest and bleakest book I have ever read, a crime book that doubles as satire. Wambaugh about to quit LAPD after fourteen years, unloads years of pent up frustration here somehow converting it into a crime classic. This is as raw and crude as it gets. It imagines LAPD as aI didn't like this book to begin with, it all seemed a bit hard-boiled and the Police-Academy-meets-Porky's japes rankled. But then I saw that the cops' jobs had brutalised them: facing the worst of humanity every single day, sometimes you just got to drink, fight and use the expression 'ball' when referring to casual sex with cocktail waitresses. Gosh darn it, I began to care. I cried - twice, damn you. And I also sniggered at that classic gag: 'Madam, were you cut in the fracas?'. 'No, about
I'm a gumshoe kinda guy - I go for the classic, hard-boiled stories in the form of Chandler and Hammett and often have some apprehensions when it comes to police procedural(ish) stories. However, a colleague recommended this book to me and since I am working my way through the "Crime Masterworks" series I thought why not...?Boy am I glad I did!The story revolves around 70s LA cops who each have their own vices and troubles as they try to tackle the grim world they are empowered to protect. When
Whereas The New Centurions was a rather grey and grimy introductory work, The Choirboys was a raunchy and grinning buzzbomb of a shock, delivered when I was still young enough to hold that cops were a far different, more upright and austerely dignified breed of human than the noodle-legged, drunken clowns carousing and stumbling about MacArthur Park so perfectly etched by Wambaugh. Here was a group of average schmoes punching the clock, dealing with the annoying and overbearing bureaucratic
An influential classic and uproarious pitch-black comedy. I'll knock off the cons quickly - Wambaugh isn't the finest or a particularly economical prose stylist, and though the situations are believable, his sentences sometimes aren't. However, he doesn't overwrite much and he DOES get a passing grade on this matter, and I suspect that The Choirboys wouldn't be quite as funny if he'd been more economical. Here's an analogy. The Choirboys like sitting down to a banquet comprised of
For writers, this book is a fantastic example of defining and developing memorable characters by showing their day-to-day, repetitive traits. Wambaugh's characters pop fully formed into your head, set up shop, and hang out for the entire time you're reading the novel.It would have been a four-star for me, except the repetitive traits became too repetitive. Whaddaya Mean Dean's schtick quickly grew old. Instead of his repetitive, oblivious questions being awesome seasoning, they became the full
One of the many things that i enjoyed very much about this book was that it showed an inside look into the lives of the men in blue even though it is a work of fiction. Joseph Wambaugh is a former policeman which allows him to articulate the lives of cops quite accurately. I also like the dialogue between the cops and how it adds to the imagery of the story and shows a different side of policemen. I believe that Wambaugh could have revealed more about each character. In the book, the syntax
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