A former detective sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department, Joseph Wambaugh is the author of five best-selling novels about cops. Wambaugh's first three books, written while he was a policeman, are serious, straightforward, and realistic accounts...

Jimmy Lee Smith, the lifelong criminal whose role in the 1963 kidnapping and killing of a police officer inspired Joseph Wambaugh's true-life crime novel "The Onion Field," has died in jail at age 76, a state prisons official said.Smith died Friday at the Pitchess Detention...

Today is Sunday, Jan. 22, the 22nd day of 2007. There are 343 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Jan. 22, 1917, President Wilson pleaded for an end to war in Europe, calling for "peace without victory." (By April, however, America also was...

Like any successful company, NBC Universal has always celebrated green — as in money.But this week, green is taking on a whole new shade as the company goes with environmentally themed content across all of its programming outlets."NBC Nightly News" will dedicate each weeknight to...

WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST-SELLERSFICTION1. "World Without End" by Ken Follett (Dutton)2. "Playing for Pizza" by John Grisham (Doubleday)3. "The Choice" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)4. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Hardcover)5. "Dark of the Moon" by John Sandford (Putnam Adult)6. "You've...

[In "Black Marble" Joseph Wambaugh] has created a detective, Andrei Mikhailovich Valnikov, who is almost as touching, variable and bravely idiotic as Nabokov's Professor Pnin…. Valnikov isn't one of Wambaugh's familiar "centurions," "choirboys," or "blue knights." He's the "black marble," the loser, the bad-luck piece. (p. 11)