Wambaugh's main theme is, as always, good vs. evil, with the cops embodying good and an assortment of criminals embodying evil. Good in Wambaugh's fiction is always flawed by weaknesses, usually weaknesses of the flesh, and sometimes tragic weaknesses; evil in Wambaugh's fiction is never banal, and often is exuberant and even zany. In his early novels, there was an element of hysteria in his depiction of the extremes of good and evil, a sense that the representatives of both forces were losing control. The cops were often suicidal; the worst criminals were sometimes viciously sadistic. In his later fiction, as he moved toward more producing more conventional best selling cop novels, he restored a degree of normalcy to the good and the evil. In The Golden Orange, Wambaugh actually wrote a traditional detective story, with.....
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