Wambaugh's novels, The Glitter Dome (1981), The Delta Star (1983), and The Secrets of Harry Bright (1985) are also set in Wambaugh's new, wider world.

The reader is shown that the upper classes — Hollywood producers in The Glitter Dome, scientists in The Delta Star, and Palm Springs millionaires in The Secrets of Harry Bright — are as corrupt, crime-ridden, lonely and vulnerable as anyone else. Wambaugh's pictures of these worlds as they impinge on the consciousness of the lower-middleclass policeman is very effective.

His heroes are getting older in these books. They are excellent detectives but their jobs have taken their toll, turning them into emotional invalids.

Sidney Blackpool in The Secrets of Harry Bright and Mario Villalobos in The Delta Star, like Andrei Mikhailovich Valnikov in The Black Marble, are alcoholics, but excellent detectives nonetheless.

Even when they are redeemed by love and work and manage to...