L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City
By John Buntin
Harmony, 2009, 432 pages
$17.16 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle
Click on the book image for details or to purchase.

Buntin’s book is a dual biography that weaves together the careers of (a) ruthless and flamboyant mobster Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen, and (b) uncorruptible but racist L.A. police chief William Parker. The Los Angeles criminal scene that Buntin describes, mostly from the Great Depression through the Watts race riots of 1965, is brutal and appalling.

Parker joined the L.A. police in 1927, became chief in 1950, and died in 1966. Before he took over as chief, the police “didn’t fight organized crime, they managed it.” Police were poorly educated, hardly trained, often drunk on the job, and hostile to minorities. City hall was equally corrupt. Parker hired 1,400 new cops and instilled discipline (not respect for civil liberties) in the force.

The diminutive Cohen, kingpin of the Los Angeles underworld, was “Hollywood’s favorite gangster” (Esotouric). Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. hung around with him. He was brought down not by Parker but by the feds twice for tax evasion, for which he served two hitches in the pen. When he died (in his sleep) in 1975, he still owed the USA almost $500,000.

L.A. Noir is entertaining, but Buntin “writes in cliched journalese,” says Jonathan Yardley in his Washington Post review, “and tries to cram too much” into the book. Kirkus called it “a roller coaster ride [and] gripping social history.”

Here are five books, all compelling and revolting, about cops who are not the courageous, heroic sort. They are the corrupt, brutal, racist, sexist, cowardly sort. No wonder the book covers are so dark. (Click on the book images for more info or to purchase.)

NYPD Blue Lies: The Shocking True Story of Racism, Corruption, Cover-Ups and Murder in the NYPD
By Charles Castro
Arbor Books 2009, 320 pages
$15.95 paperback

When a New York City cop issued a traffic ticket to a state Senator, the politician called a top-ranking member of the NYPD and asked for a favor. That call started a chain of events that resulted in the horrific murder of an innocent woman. The NYPD’s connection to the murder was covered up, and the police brass set up police sergeant Charles Castro as the scapegoat. But Castro refused to roll over, and struggled to prove his innocence. His book reveals rampant corruption in the department, and paints a scathing portrait of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country’s Greatest Police Force
By Leonard Levitt
Thomas Dunne Books 2009, 320 pages
$17.15 hardcover, $13.72 Kindle

As a reporter for Newsday, Levitt covered the NYPD, the world’s largest law enforcement agency with 35,000 cops. He witnessed heroism, but this book is about scandal. He observed that corruption wasn’t just a rank-and-file phenomenon, but it permeated the highest levels of the department (as well as City Hall). Frank Serpico said, “It’s a fascinating read. I couldn’t put it down.”

Police Unbound: Corruption, Abuse, and Heroism by the Boys in Blue
By Anthony V. Bouza
Prometheus 2001, 303 pages
$30.98 hardcover

The majority of cops perform daily acts of individual heroism that go unrecognized, says Bouza, who joined the NYPD in 1953 and rose through the ranks to Minneapolis chief of police before retiring in 1989. But he portrays police departments collectively as agencies that primarily protect the interests of the “white, moneyed overclass.” For the non-white underclass, they are characterized by neglect at best and systemized brutality at worst. “The temptations to abuse are everywhere, and practically irresistible,” he says. This book, which is part memoir and part how-to manual for police departments, is written “with humor, surprising insights, and questions of social justice that may unnerve many readers,” said Publishers Weekly.

Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century
By Mike Dash
Three Rivers Press 2008, 464 pages
$10.85 paperback, $9.99 Kindle

Satan’s Circus was the vice district of Manhattan in the first two decades of the 1900s, featuring saloons, dance halls, houses of prostitution, and casinos. This book focuses on NYPD lieutenant Charles Becker, who worked undercover in the Circus as leader of a vice squad—as well as a vast extortion racket. He earned a reputation for extreme corruption and brutality. In 1912 Becker was convicted of murdering a gambler and pimp, and became the only cop to be executed in U.S. history. His trial both fascinated and divided the city, as some believed he was innocent, set up by powerful mobsters, cops, and/or politicians. Becker himself was as tall, handsome, and articulate as he was repelling.

Brotherhood of Corruption: A Cop Breaks the Silence on Police Abuse, Brutality, and Racial Profiling
By Juan Antonio Juarez
Chicago Review Press 2004, 320 pages
$18.21 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

The author was a Chicago cop, working in an elite narcotics unit. He observed police brutality, racism, sexual abuse of female suspects, and “horrific” and “harrowing” corruption of all sorts, including the violent sort. Did he courageously expose this alarming betrayal of public trust, as did the hero Frank Serpico, while he was employed by the Chicago Police Department? No, he became one of the abusers, then he got busted, and then, when exposing corruption no longer required courage, he wrote this book and is still earning royalties from the story—the moral of which is that the most terrifying gang in town is the corrupt police unit.