The grand master of the police story returns to the one and only LAPD in a gripping new novel about live in the country's most sensational police force.

For a cop, a night on the job means killing time and trying not to get killed.

If you're a cop in Hollywood Division, it also means dealing with the most overwrought, desperate, and deluded criminals anywhere. When you're patrolling Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, neither a good reputation nor the lessons of scandals past will help you keep your cool, your sanity, or your life when things heat up.

The robbery of a Hollywood jewelry store, complete with masks and a hand grenade, quickly connects to a Russian nightclub, an undercover operation gone bloodily wrong, and a cluelessly ambitious pair of tweakers. Putting the pieces together are the sergeant they call the Oracle and his squad of street cops. There's Budgie Polk, a twentysomething firecracker with a four-month-old at home, and Wesley Drubb, a rich boy who joined the force seeking thrills. Fausto Gamboa is the tetchy veteran, and Hollywood Nate is the one who never shuts up about movies. They spend their days in patrol cars and their nights in the underbelly of a city that never sleeps. From their headquarters at Hollywood Station, they see the glamour city for what it is: a field of land mines, where the mundane is dangerous and the dangerous is mundane.

In his long-awaited return to the Los Angeles Police Department, Joseph Wambaugh deploys his bone-deep understanding of cops' lives -- and his lethal sense of humor - on a raucous ride through the streets of Hollywood, where no one is safe from the gritty city.  Especially not the cops.

JOSEPH WAMBAUGH a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of sixteen prior works of fiction and nonaction, including The Choirboys and The Onion Field. In 2004, he was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Southern California.

ADAM GRUPPER's Broadway credits include Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme, 45 Seconds from Broadway, The Wild Party, Guys and Dolls, The Secret Garden, City of Angels, and Into the Woods. He has appeared in the films Two Weeks Notice and It Runs in the Family, and on television in The Sopranos, Hack, Third Watch, Now and Again, Law& Order: Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: SVU.