The New Centurions was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1970, while Wambaugh was still a detective with the LAPD. The novel was a sensation — a bestseller that changed the public’s understanding of police work and established a new subgenre of fiction: the realistic police procedural told from the inside, by someone who knew.
The novel follows three rookies — Serge Duran (Mexican-American, working a barrio that is both home and foreign), Roy Fehler (intellectual, liberal, convinced he can reform the system), and Gus Plebesly (small, insecure, desperate to prove himself) — from their academy training through five years on the job. The trajectory is the same for all three: idealism eroded by reality, marriages destroyed by shift work and stress, and the progressive psychological damage of daily exposure to violence, poverty, and human cruelty.
Wambaugh’s innovation was treating police officers not as heroic investigators solving crimes but as working-class laborers performing a physically and psychologically destructive job for inadequate compensation. His cops are not brilliant; they are overwhelmed. They do not solve elegant puzzles; they manage chaos. They are not noble warriors; they are human beings damaged by their work, and the damage spreads to their families, their marriages, and their capacity for normal life.
The novel climaxes with the Watts Riots — the officers thrown into a situation of genuine urban warfare with no preparation, no understanding, and no support.
Collecting The New Centurions
First edition (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1970): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- Without jacket: $10–$20