Joseph Wambaugh has 10 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 11 ratings. The most-rated is The Onion Field.
The Onion Field
Summary
Hollywood. Saturday night. A broken taillight leads to a routine traffic stop. It shouldn’t have changed the lives of the four men involved, but it did. The Onion Field is the frighteningly true story of a fatal collision of destinies that would lead two young cops and two young robbers to a deserted field on the outskirts of Los Angeles, towards a bizarre execution and its terrible aftermath. The Onion Field is the basis for the movie starring James Woods and John Savage.
©1973 Joseph Wambaugh (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Harbor Nocturne
Summary
When Dinko Babich, a young longshoreman, delivers Lita Medina, a young Mexican dancer, from San Pedro Harbor to a Hollywood nightclub, their lives are forever changed. An unexpectedly tender and moving love story develops among the cops and criminals who occupy the harbor, and soon Dinko and Lita are caught up in terror and peril through no fault of their own. Some LAPD characters from Wambaugh’s acclaimed “Hollywood Station” series are here: the surfer cops “Flotsam and Jetsam,” aspiring actor “Hollywood Nate” Weiss, and young Britney Small, along with new members of the midwatch, all gamely coping with the wackiness of Hollywood. It’s a tale only Wambaugh could have told, with his trademark dark humor and unflinching eye for detail.
©2012 Joseph Wambaugh. Recorded by arrangement with Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2012 HighBridge Company
Hollywood Hills
Summary
The legendary Hollywood Hills are home to wealth, fame, and power - passing through the neighborhood, it's hard not to get a little greedy. LAPD veteran "Hollywood Nate" Weiss could take or leave the opulence, but he wouldn't say no to onscreen fame. He may get his shot when he catches the appreciative eye of B-list director Rudy Ressler, and his troublemaking fiance, Leona Brueger, the older-but-still-foxy widow of a processed-meat tycoon. Nate tries to elude her crafty seductions, but consents to keep an eye on their estate in the Hollywood Hills while they're away. Also minding the mansion is Raleigh Dibble, a hapless ex-con trying to put the past behind him. Raleigh is all too happy to be set up for the job - as butler-cum-watchdog - by Nigel Wickland, Leona's impeccably dressed art dealer. What Raleigh doesn't realize is that under the natty clothes and posh accent, Nigel has a nefarious plan: two paintings hanging on the mansion's walls will guarantee them more money than they've ever seen. Everyone's dreams are just within reach--the only problem is, this is Hollywood. A circle of teenage burglars that the media has dubbed The Bling Ring has taken to pillaging the homes of Hollywood celebutants like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and when a pair of drug-addled young copycats stumbles upon Nigel's heist, that's just the beginning of the disaster to come. Soon Hollywood Nate, surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam, and the rest of the team at Hollywood Station have a deadly situation on their hands. Hollywood Hills is a raucous and dangerous roller coaster ride that showcases Joseph Wambaugh in vintage form.
©2010 Joseph Wambaugh (P)2010 Hachette
Hollywood Moon
Summary
There's a saying at Hollywood station that the full moon brings out the beast - or rather than the best - in the precinct's citizens. One moonlit night, LAPD veteran Dana Vaughn and "Hollywood" Nate Weiss, a struggling-actor-turned cop, get a call about a young man who's been attacking women. Meanwhile, two surfer cops known as Flotsam and Jetsam, keep bumping into an odd, suspicious duo - a smooth-talking player in dreads and a crazy-eyed, tattooed biker. No one suspects that all three dubious characters might be involved in something bigger, more high-tech, and much more illegal. After a dizzying series of twists, turns, and chases, the cops will find they've stumbled upon a complex web of crime where even the criminals can't be sure who's conning whom. Wambaugh once again masterfully gets inside the hearts and minds of the cops whose jobs have them constantly on the brink of danger. By turns heart-wrenching, exhilarating, and laugh-out-loud funny, Hollywood Moon is his most thrilling and deeply affecting ride yet through the singular streets of L.A.
©2009 Joseph Wambaugh (P)2009 Hachette
Finnegan's Week
Summary
Fin Finnegan, a San Diego police detective and wannabe actor heading straight for a midlife meltdown, is assigned a routine truck theft that turns into a toxic chemical spill, setting off a bizarre chain reaction of death and murder on both sides of the Mexican border. Fin is forced to team up with Nell Salter, a sexy female investigator, as well as an equally fetching U.S. Navy investigator who wants to learn all that Fin can teach her - and that’s saying a lot.
©1993 Joseph Wambaugh. Recorded by arrangement with Mysterious Press.com, LLC. (P)2013 HighBridge Company
The Black Marble
Summary
He is a damned good cop -- a burned-out homicide detective wrapped around a Smith & Wesson .38 and a vodka bottle. She is his partner -- twice divorced, nursing a grudge against men, obsessed by the awful temptation of love.
©1978 Joseph Wambaugh (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Hollywood Station
Summary
The Grand Master of the police procedural returns to the Los Angeles Police Department in a gripping new audiobook about life in one of the more sensational police forces. They call him the Oracle. He's got 46 years under his belt and more hash marks than a football field. More importantly, he has a crew of cops to look out for on the streets of Hollywood. From his understaffed office at Hollywood Station, he keeps a close eye on his squad who spend their day in patrol cars, and their nights in the underbelly of a city that never sleeps. As they make their way from the drug dens to dirty street corners, a string of seemingly unrelated events lures the cops of Hollywood Station to their most startling case, reminding them that nothing is too horrific or extreme for Los Angeles. In his long-awaited return to the LAPD, Joseph Wambaugh takes his listeners on a raucous ride through the streets of Los Angeles and into the heart of the LAPD, where no one's safe from the gritty city - especially the cops.
©2006 Joseph Wambaugh. All Rights Reserved (P)2006 Hachette Audio. All Rights Reserved.
The Glitter Dome
Summary
In his finest, most compelling blend of wild humor and powerful drama, Joseph Wambaugh leads us into the Hollywood scene to demonstrate the effects of that heady, amoral world on four sets of police partners enmeshed in the glamour and the grime, the hustle and the horror. They live and work in a dizzying mix of moguls and starlets, elaborate parties, outrageous and sordid actions; a place where sex and drugs are open and the big deals are undercover. A visit to The Glitter Dome - their after-hours watering hole, where the lights are kaleidoscopic and groupies plentiful - is the only way to come down from the excitement and fear of the day. Suddenly, their grim world of vice, drugs, and child abuse is interrupted by the murder of a major studio’s president. And two veteran homicide detectives discover the alarming extent to which they, too, have been seduced by Hollywood. Once again, in the boisterous and riveting tradition of The Choirboys, Joseph Wambaugh creates a group of unexpected and unforgettable characters who inhabit the shadow world he knows so well, where the line between cop and criminal is destroyed.
©1981 Original material, Joseph Wambaugh. Recorded by arrangement with Mysterious Press, LLC. (P)2011 HighBridge Company
The Choirboys
Summary
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.
©1975 Joseph Wambaugh (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Hollywood Crows
Summary
In Wambaugh's gripping new audiobook about life in the country's most sensational police force, the beloved Oracle has been replaced by thin-lipped Sgt. Treacle, but the setting is the same -Hollywood, "America's nut capital" - and some favorite personalities are still around. When Nate and Bix Rumstead (a supposedly upstanding cop with serious sobriety issues) find themselves caught up with bombshell Margot Aziz, they think they're just having some fun. But in Hollywood, nothing is ever what it seems. To them, Margot is a harmless socialite, stuck in the middle of an ugly divorce from the nefarious bar-owner, Ali Aziz. What Nate and Bix don't know is that Margot's no helpless victim: she's setting them both up so that she can get away with the perfect murder - and still stand to inherit her ex-husbands's ill-won fortune. What SHE doesn't know is that Aziz has replaced her sleeping pills with a poison. And then there's Leonard Stillwater, a small time tweaker whose connection to Aziz is about to shoot him into the big leagues. Complete with scams, cokeheads, and petty (and some not so petty) crimes, Hollywood Crows offers the very best of Wambaugh: impeccable plotting, acerbic humor, and plenty of flawed but lovable characters.
©2008 Joseph Wambaugh (P)2008 Hachette Audio