Talking Blues - The Police in Their Own Words

London: Collins Harvill. Very Good/Very Good. 1989. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0002724367 512 pages clean and tight. Price clipped. No inscription. "I had a dream about all of us, about the Section going round in a car. We were in plainclothes and we were indiscriminately murdering everybody in the day time that was causing trouble in the night time. I've never enjoyed a dream so much in my life." Talking Blues is an emotional mosaic, a collective portrait of the police in the late 1980s. Serving officers of every rank from all over Britain and from Northern Ireland speak with painful but impressive frankness about the demands of their work, about the loneliness and questionable leadership that often comes with it, and about the dangers of policing an increasingly violent society. The 1980s have changed policing out of all recognition. The shock waves of the inner-city riots and the miners' strike are still being felt - much as the Vietnam war affected American soldiers for years afterwards. Intimately and sometimes disturbingly portrayed in their own words, the men and women interviewed here are by turns fearful and brave, angry and amused, idealistic and cynical, and often very moving. It makes you glad that someone is doing their job, and very glad that it isn't you. "I think it is an extremely important book, probably the best on the British police for the last twenty years" Brian Hilliard, Editor of Police Review .