The Onion Field Paperback – January 1, 1984 by Joseph WAMBAUGH
 
Written by Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, this is the bestselling nonfiction account and in-depth analysis of a 1963 Los Angeles crime. Two policemen pull over two crooks in an otherwise routine traffic stop. But the desperate crooks overpower the officers, ...."get their guns, kidnap them, drive them out to an onion field in the countryside, and murder one of them. One of the cops flees and escapes death, but is haunted by guilt over the death of his partner and his inability to help. The murderers are captured, tried, convicted, and then retried over and over again on appeal. The surviving cop is further savaged when the LAPD uses the case in training as an example of all the wrong things a cop can do when stopping and approaching cars. Haunted by horrific memories, saddened by the loss of his partner, wracked by guilt, ostracized by his own, and repeatedly tormented by defense attorneys in one retrial after another, the cop suffers emotional meltdown. Wambaugh, takes us meticulously through the crime, second by second, and then tells the surviving cop's powerful and moving story: the destruction of a forgotten victim. This is as good as it gets. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead."
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