The Secrets of Harry Bright

As with his other novels beginning with The Black Marble, Wambaugh spins his tale from numerous points of view, but has as its central character and protagonist a competent, middle aged but dissipated detective sergeant whose age and police experience mirror that of Wambaugh himself, and where he likely would have been had he not resigned from the LAPD.

Wambaugh introduces a new psychological theme in The Secrets of Harry Bright, that of the relationship of fathers and sons, exploring it as a sub-theme to those of burnout and police suicide that characterized his previous novels. He uses as a vehicle for this what he describes as the "unnatural perversion" of sons dying before their fathers, which has affected three key figures in his story. Although a murder whodunit, the plot is secondary to the gradual revelation of its central character, Sidney Blackpool. The eponymous persona, Harry Bright, is seen only through the descriptions of others until the dénouement of the novel, when he becomes a crucial clue to Blackpool's fate.

Paco Pedroza is chief of police in Mineral Springs, California, a small nondescript desert town near Palm Springs. The Los Angeles Police Department informs him that they have developed a new lead in a notorious, unsolved Palm Springs homicide in which the body was found in Solitaire Canyon, a notorious biker hangout within Mineral Springs. While Paco unenthusiastically prepares for a visit by an LAPD homicide team, desert rat drunkard Beavertail Bigelow, the object of a prank by one of Paco's cops, stumbles across an antique ukulele in the desert that will become a key piece of evidence in the renewed investigation.

On election day 1984 in Los Angeles, LAPD Sgt. Sidney Blackpool is invited to the corporate office of high tech industrialist Victor Watson, whose son Jack was the victim in the Palm Springs homicide. Over drinks, Watson tells Blackpool he pulled strings with LAPD to arrange for Blackpool to investigate a new lead that tenuously ties the case to Blackpool's jurisdiction in Hollywood. Blackpool suspects that the lead is a pretext to draw in the resources of LAPD after both Palm Springs and the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to solve the case. Watson knows that Blackpool's son died at approximately the same time, and using that to engage his sympathies, persuades Blackpool to work the case as part of an expenses-paid golf vacation for himself and his partner, Otto Stringer, in Palm Springs. His inducement is a suggested promise of a retirement job for Blackpool as head of security for Watson Industries.

During the search for the missing Jack Watson, Officer O.A. Jones of Mineral Springs PD became lost in the desert, where he accidentally became a witness in the investigation, and in finding the lost O.A. Jones, other officers found the victim's body in a burned out car. While O.A. Jones tries to unravel his delirium recollections of a song he overheard being sung at the crime scene, other officers confiscate the ukulele, which Bigelow has sold to another desert rat, as the weapon used in a domestic violence case.

Blackpool and Stringer check into a posh Palm Springs hotel with $10,000 in $500 bills ("President McKinleys") as expense money. Their investigation starts slowly, as both are more interested in vacation amenities than work. After a visit to the Watson house, where they interview the live-in "houseboy", Harlan Penrod, and then a phone call to the Palm Springs PD, the investigation picks up speed as both conclude that a kidnapping was highly unlikely and try to figure out why Jack Watson would have gone to Solitaire Canyon.

Harlan provides a photo of Jack with a possible suspect. The investigation, with rounds of golf sandwiched in between, takes them to the Mineral Springs PD, the Eleven Ninety-nine Club (a cop bar in Mineral Springs), a gay bar in Palm Springs, a biker's shack in Solitaire Canyon, the Thunderbird Country Club, and a nursing home in Indio. The ukulele and the LAPD cops intersect at the cop bar, where Blackpool makes the connection linking it to O.A. Jones's memory. As suspects are investigated and eliminated as possibilities, Sidney Blackpool and Otto are forced to confront the possibility that either of two sergeants of the Mineral Springs PD, Harry Bright or Coy Brickman, might be Jack Watson's killer.

A tryst with Harry Bright's ex-wife provides the final clues for Sidney Blackpool, who confronts Paco Pedroza with his suspicions. After a heated confrontation, Pedroza agrees to cooperate in arranging ballistics tests of his officers' pistols but before that can take place, fate intervenes. Blackpool and Otto confront Coy Brickman, who reveals a hypothetical solution to the case to avoid implicating himself, tying off all loose ends raised by the investigation. Blackpool demands to see for himself proof of Harry Bright's invalid condition, which is far worse than he had considered. Afterwards, Otto washes his hands of the case and returns to Los Angeles without Sidney Blackpool, who takes the information to Victor Watson. When the interview shatters Blackpool, Sidney returns to Mineral Springs and finally discovers Harry Bright's secret.

Wambaugh's novels are noted for numerous quirky but incidental characters, stereotypical lampoons of police officer "types" he either observed personally or the subjects of anecdotes related to him by officers. In The Secrets of Harry Bright the officers of the small, fictional Mineral Springs Police Department fill this role. The common thread linking them is their status as misfits elsewhere, and that all were recommended by Sgt. Harry Bright for hiring. Wambaugh expands his lampoons in The Secrets of Harry Bright to include two episodes depicting wealthy retired country clubbers, Archie Rosenkrantz and Fiona Grout, encountered by Blackpool and Stringer on golf courses.

• Review, Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1985
• Review, Time Magazine, October 28, 1985