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Badge of Honor
Vintage paperback
Mass Market Paperback
First published July 2, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 7, 2024
The back of the book would make you think that this is a vigilante style/Dirty Harry cop thriller. It’s more like a west coast version of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels. It’s very well written and has a few surprises and some quirks I enjoyed.
Working on a tip from an informant the police set up a stake-out on some liquor stores that are set up to be robbed. Things go wrong when the criminals dressed as detectives kill two cops and speed away from the crime scene. The criminals crash into another car on the highway and kill a Senator’s son and severely injure his pregnant girlfriend. One of the criminals perishes from a shoot out with the cops while the other escapes. Two cops Stryker (not to be confused with Pinnacle’s Stryker from William Crawford) and his partner West are on a manhunt to find him. They also have to deal with an upcoming grand jury investigation of the death of the Senator’s son.
The book juggles several other characters and deals with their work lives and private lives. There’s a ton of rants about liberals being soft on crime, criminals have more rights than victims, cops have their hands tied that are usually prevalent in these types of books. There’s also a bunch of racist language. It’s a 70’s book and the racist language plays into the story.
There’s lots a little quirks in the book that I really liked. Stryker gets kicked in the nuts really hard and there are several pages of him having to deal with the pain. He doesn’t just automatically recover from the nut shot. There’s also a pretty bizarre passage where we find out the aid to the Senator hates cops. The reason being that when he was 13 he took the family dog out for a walk. He then went into the bushes to take a leak and the dog started licking his privates. A cop walked by a caught him in the act. It’s a real weird WTF moment.
I also got a slight chuckle when the Chief was talking about the integrity of the LAPD. They don’t hide or cover up nothing. There’s also a way out of left field death for one of the characters that caught me by surprise.
I really liked Stryker and West. They are the main characters and they got a good rapport with each other. They insult each other left and right all in good fun.
I went four stars due to the ending. It’s an ending I didn’t see coming and makes a pretty powerful statement at the same time.
I would definitely recommend picking up this book if you run across it.
Working on a tip from an informant the police set up a stake-out on some liquor stores that are set up to be robbed. Things go wrong when the criminals dressed as detectives kill two cops and speed away from the crime scene. The criminals crash into another car on the highway and kill a Senator’s son and severely injure his pregnant girlfriend. One of the criminals perishes from a shoot out with the cops while the other escapes. Two cops Stryker (not to be confused with Pinnacle’s Stryker from William Crawford) and his partner West are on a manhunt to find him. They also have to deal with an upcoming grand jury investigation of the death of the Senator’s son.
The book juggles several other characters and deals with their work lives and private lives. There’s a ton of rants about liberals being soft on crime, criminals have more rights than victims, cops have their hands tied that are usually prevalent in these types of books. There’s also a bunch of racist language. It’s a 70’s book and the racist language plays into the story.
There’s lots a little quirks in the book that I really liked. Stryker gets kicked in the nuts really hard and there are several pages of him having to deal with the pain. He doesn’t just automatically recover from the nut shot. There’s also a pretty bizarre passage where we find out the aid to the Senator hates cops. The reason being that when he was 13 he took the family dog out for a walk. He then went into the bushes to take a leak and the dog started licking his privates. A cop walked by a caught him in the act. It’s a real weird WTF moment.
I also got a slight chuckle when the Chief was talking about the integrity of the LAPD. They don’t hide or cover up nothing. There’s also a way out of left field death for one of the characters that caught me by surprise.
I really liked Stryker and West. They are the main characters and they got a good rapport with each other. They insult each other left and right all in good fun.
I went four stars due to the ending. It’s an ending I didn’t see coming and makes a pretty powerful statement at the same time.
I would definitely recommend picking up this book if you run across it.
March 22, 2026
This book from 1974 was written by an LAPD officer who was a brother of a neighbor I grew up with. I picked it up to read from EBay for nostalgic reasons. I’m not sure how the book did at the time, but it doesn’t read well now in 2026. Outdated cultural references, especially the portrayals of Blacks and women.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews