It’s the birthday of former LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh (b. 1937), known as the father of the modern police novel. Wambaugh’s books have been so successful that his fame interfered with his police work and he had to quit being a cop.

Wambaugh was born in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of an Irish-American Roman Catholic policeman. At fourteen, he and his family moved to California, where he graduated from Chaffey High School in Ontario and then served in the U.S. Marine Corps for several years. He also studied at Chaffey College part-time and married his high school sweetheart when he was just 18. Eventually he studied English at California State University in Los Angeles and was about to become an English teacher when he heard that LAPD cops made more money and had more excitement on the job. (I believe the former, but how can the latter possibly be true?) Wambaugh joined the LAPD in 1960 and was a cop for 14 years.

Along the way, he got his M.A. in English and Spanish, which would seem to set him up perfectly to be an actual grammar cop. (*Envy.*) Instead, he began writing about his experiences as a detective sergeant, and from the start his books were a huge success: The New Centurions (1971), The Blue Knight (1972), and The Onion Field (1973). His growing fame started causing problems at work: his web site states that “People would call the station with bogus crimes and ask for Sgt. Wambaugh to solve them” and also that he’d arrest someone only to have them ask for a part in one of his film adaptations. He retired from police work in 1974.

Wambaugh’s novels are known to be both hilariously funny and dark and macabre, and I once picked up The Onion Field, skimmed a section that haunts me to this day, and will never ever read the rest. So there’s that.

Wambaugh has written over 20 books, most of them novels, the latest five of which are in the Hollywood Station series. He’s best-known books perhaps include The Glitter Dome (1981) and The Blooding: The True Story of the Narborough Village Murders (1989, nonfiction). He’s won three Edgar Awards, been named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and stayed married to that very first wife, with whom he has three children (two still living).

Have a fine Tuesday adjusting to life after a blissfully snowy three-day-weekend and stay scrupulously honest to the data.