THE NEW CENTURIONS, 1971

The New Centurions is fiction, but everything in it is real.

The New Centurions: a novel about policemen by a policeman. Tough, but compassionate, it’ll make you understand--perhaps for the first time--what it’s really like to be a cop.

The new centurions are three Los Angeles policemen: Serge Duran, a tough, competent Mexican-American and ex-Marine who learns everything fast--except how to forget his Mexican blood; Gus Plebesly, a little man with the face of a baby, the speed of an antelope, and a panicky fear of violence; and Roy Fehler, a college man with ideas like a social worker, who discovers--too late--that you can get killed that way.

The New Centurions is the story of their five nerve-grinding years of training and experience, five years of investigating robberies and rousting whores, quelling gang wars and quieting family squabbles. It’s a story of emergencies and frustrations, where every week means new dangers and new routines, long hours of paperwork or the sudden, violent eruption of a race riot.

Whether on the night patrol or the vice squad, each man must learn, and learn fast, about the guts of the street--and the guts of the people:

“We see them when nobody else sees them, when they’re born and dying and fornicating and drunk. We see people when they’re taking anything of value from other people and when they’re without shame or very much ashamed and we learn secrets that their husbands and wives don’t even know, secrets that they even try to keep from themselves.”

The New Centurions was Joseph Wambaugh’s first book. He was a ten-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Force when it was published. He neither exaggerated nor whitewashed a cop’s life.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

“Do you like cops? Read The New Centurions. Do you hate cops? Read The New Centurions. This novel performs one of those essential and enduring functions the novel--and the novel alone--can perform. It takes us into the minds and hearts, into the nerves and (sometimes literally) into the guts of other humnan beings--and, in the hands of a good writer, it achieves a mixture of empathy and objectivity that creates genuine understanding.”  New York Times Book Review

“An unsparing and powerful novel which takes us right to the front line of the police experience. Wambaugh’s great and enviable accomplishment is that he has made his police come alive as human beings... The novel takes its power from the same sources which illuminated the works of such important American writers as Crane and Dos Passos, Faulkner and Hemingway.” Los Angeles Times

“This fine book should earn a million dollars for its author, Joseph Wambaugh. I hope it does. His novel about police work is so clear and so honest that many readers will put it down without thinking how difficult it must have been for Wambaugh to write it this way.” Washington Post

“The New Centurions is of inestimable value, telling us with compassion and respect the predicament of the police, which ultimately becomes ours, and everybody’s... What he knows, Wambaugh tells truly, perceptively, and well.” Book World

“A rattling good narrative of life on a big city police force, the gutsy chronicle of how a cop is made. The book is informative, gripping, poignant. It helps to dissipate the air of menace that so often clouds our view of the police. Wambaugh can tell a smashing story.” Boston Globe

“Wambaugh puts the reader right down there on the firing line with the cops--giving it to them like it really is with his stomach-twisting, fascinating novel.” Associated Press

“It is difficult to finish the book without feeling that policemen are not, as a class, the pigs that both the desperately exploited and the calculating riot-engineers would make them out to be. Nor are they the heroic Galahads of law and order others would have us believe. They are human beings... The policeman is an inhabitant of this workd of those who are still more or less protected against the toxins of our tim3e. After reading The New Centurions one at least understands the policeman a little more clearly.” Clifton Fadiman, Book-of-the-Month Club News