Who’s Reading Beat Cop to Top Cop, and What Does a Top Cop Read?

"Believe me, people who read Timoney’s book have a treat on their hands," says Tom Wolfe in the foreword to the forthcoming Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities. Wolfe's foreword appeared in Ireland's Independent yesterday. In it, Wolfe shares a few two-fisted tales from John F. Timoney's career as a tough Irish American cop who busts criminals along with some stereotypes. Wolfe writes:

Well, I could tell you Timoney tales from now until the sun comes up, but the book before us is not John Timoney's personal memoir. And I say, thank God for that. A memoir — anybody's memoir — is like Wikipedia: some of it may be true. Timoney does something far more valuable. He takes us inside the world of police work in three big cities: New York, Philadelphia, and Miami. He shows us metropolitan cops in action, their strategies, their sensitivity to public opinion, and, most fascinating of all to me, the political games they have no choice but to play.

Timoney himself recommended five police-related books to five-books.com, including Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.