The trouble is that this relentless catalogue of incident [The Choirboys], by turns bizarre and boring, is housed in a narrative built brick by brick with each character waiting in the wings for the night his number comes up. What Mr. Wambaugh calls "the incredibly gritty intimate world of the radio car" (his prolix style readily accommodates such descriptive phrases) unfortunately allows him to bring on his patrolmen in pairs….

Mr. Wambaugh feels for his ordinary cops (and mercilessly pillories their desk-bound superiors): but so insistently that he manages long before the end to lose the very sympathy he wants to enlist on their behalf.

David Wilson, "Copping It," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1976; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3865, April 9, 1976, p. 413.