Word: cop
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...after another, the fixers and followers and bearers of messages. As the witnesses testified, they soon revealed that they had been drawn into the affair without quite realizing what they were doing, that they were more adept at taking orders than understanding them. John J. Caulfield, an ex-cop who had carried an offer of Executive clemency to convicted Watergate Raider James W. McCord Jr., described how he had been "injected into this scandal," how he had been forced to choose between obeying the law and obeying the White House, and Sam Ervin remarked: "The greatest conflicts in this world...
There are nearly as many copies of cop books coming off the presses now as there once were junior G-man badges. The first two of the year, Law and Order and The Super Cops, have already muscled onto the bestseller lists...
Serpico, the latest entry; will probably do as well. There are more to come, including a new book in September by Joseph Wambaugh, the Los Angeles police sergeant who started the current cop craze with his novels The New Centurions and The Blue Knight. Like all good young trends, the police book has moved east from the West Coast. All three of the newest books involve the New York City police department...
...books are basically alike, particularly in their insistence that they portray the way things really are. In truth, they are more of a badge cadge. Michael Korda, Simon & Schuster's editor in chief, has said of the new cop books, "The prime element is that they suggest a simpler world." Exactly so. To keep it that way, the authors rigorously suppress untidy complexity. Mrs. Uhnak's novel ends in a hasty melodramatic knitting of loose strands. Maas' reportage resolutely refuses to go beyond Serpico's own viewpoint. Whittemore is worst of all, portraying his heroes without...
...lack of ambiguities in these books renders all the central characters as inhabitants of adult comic strips. Although they write exciting narratives, the authors do not really seem to care as much about cops as they do about the marketplace. As for the police, they surely deserve reclamation from the '60s' images of them as hired goons of the Establishment. Unfortunately, the new cop books popularize the equally simple-minded view that all would be well if only bureaucrats and legal purists would leave the police alone...