When Wambaugh was in graduate school during the late 1960s, he could not discuss his police work with his fellow students because they considered policemen "pigs." This book is an attempt to explain the difficulty of police work and to demonstrate the day to day heroism of the police officer to the ordinary citizen.

The New Centurions follows three men, whose backgrounds vary, as they learn how to be police officers. The novel begins as they train at the police academy and experience the insecurities and fears of their first five years of service. During this time, they marry, divorce, become fathers. They mature, discovering strengths they did not know they had and they take on the values of policemen. These young men must cope with horrific social conditions, not only in ghetto neighborhoods, with their muggers, prostitutes, pimps and juvenile gangs but in "good" neighborhoods...