The Golden Orange

by Joseph Wambaugh

When forty-year-old cop Winnie Farlowe lost his  shield, he lost the only protection he had. Ever  since, he's been fighting a bad back, fighting the  bottle, fighting his conscience. But now he's in  for a special fight. Never before has he come up  against anyone like Tess Binder. She's a  stunningly beautiful, sexually spirited three-time  divorcee from Newport Beach--capital of California's  Golden Orange, where wallets are fat, bikinis are  skimpy, and cosmetic surgery is one sure way to a  billionaire's bank account. Nearly a year ago Tess  Binder's father washed up on the beach with a bullet  in his ear. The coroner called it suicide, but to  Tess it means the fear of her own fate. And  Winnie Farlowe is a man willing to follow wherever she  leads--straight into the juicy pulp of the Golden  Orange, a world where money is everything, but  nothing adds up . . . where death and chicanery  flourish amidst ranches, mansions, and yachting  parties. In his long-awaited new novel, best-selling  author Joseph Wambaugh combines harrowing suspense,  scathing humor, and a moving portrait of a man on  the brink of  self-destruction.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Novels, Mystery Thriller, Detective

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh Jr. was an American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Many of his novels are set in Los Angeles and its surroundings and feature Los Angeles police officers as protagonists. He won three Edgar Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Before his writing career Wambaugh received an associate of arts degree from Chaffey College and joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1960. He served for 14 years, rising from patrolman to detective sergeant.

Reviews

[Katie Hanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think anyone in the 1980s actually talked like this

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

And I thought this book was headed for a funny mixed up happy ending. Got the mixed up part right and that was about it. Only Wambaugh can write an ending that derails like this one did and make sense out of it.

[Lance Charnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joe Wambaugh is best known for his brutally honest early works centered on the LAPD -- The Blue Knight, The New Centurions and some of his other 1970s novels. This isn't one of those. More's the pity.

Winston Farlowe, the protagonist -- it's impossible to call him "the hero" -- is drinking his disability pension after being cut loose from the Newport Beach PD after a line-of-service injury. Tess Binder, a Newport Beach serial trophy wife, tracks him down at the dive bar he haunts and winds him up in a relationship based equally on alcohol and sex, then tells him someone's trying to kill her. Naturally, he tries to fix the problem, and complications ensue.

The author is skilled at creating characters that feel all-too-human and act in ways you'd expect beings such as they would act. The dialog generally feels authentic except in one aspect. He captures not only the nation's 1990 zeitgeist, but the particular vibe of the wealthiest enclave in Orange County as I remember it back at the end of the era when semi-normal people could still afford to live there (precariously). The crime-related plot is suitably devious though not particularly original (it's a variation on Double Indemnity).

However, the overall work is lazy and sloppy. The crime story is nowhere near the main plot; the first whisper of it doesn't appear until page 160 or so of the paperback. Vast numbers of pages are taken up by incidentals or repetition. This book could easily be a hundred pages shorter and would benefit greatly from the trim. The dialog fail happens repeatedly in Win's favorite bar; it descends into banter that's far too sharp and quick for real drunks to even attempt, much less pull off. It's like Cheers: West Coast Edition.

The two main characters embody the largest failings. The main plot involves watching Win drink to vast excess over and over again, both alone and in the company of fellow hopeless alcoholics. As has been noted in other reviews, the boozing is nonstop to the point of absurdity. For example: on the night of Win's first date with Tess, he downs upwards of twenty double vodkas as well as various other drinks (I finally lost track), but somehow he not only doesn't end up comatose or dead, he can apparently still perform sexually. He's equally likely to drive cars and boats while profoundly drunk. Win's created this problem for himself and is in deep denial about it, even though it's patently obvious to every other character around him. As a result, it's extremely difficult to muster any sympathy for Win or care much about his ultimate fate.

Similarly, Tess is a preening, entitled gold-digger who believes "injustice" is what happens when the third wealthy ex-husband refuses to breach the pre-nup and gives her the old Mercedes as part of the settlement. Her peers are no better. In fact, nearly all the female characters in this novel are either shrill harpies feeding on the entrails of their blameless mates, or ruthless predators stalking the rich men of Newport Beach, who are helpless prisoners of the whims of their own penises. It's hard to feel anything but contempt or disgust for Tess, no matter how much of a male-fantasy sex machine the author sets her up to be.

So with no viable main plot or relatable main characters, this is an exercise in the skilled creation of milieu (the only reason this got that second star). Whether that's worth 350 pages of your time is something you'll have to decide for yourself.

I read this many, many years ago, promptly forgot about it, and picked it up again while I was looking at how other authors had incorporated Orange County into their crime novels. I now know several things I will absolutely not do.

If you haven't encountered Wambaugh before, go back to his early works and see him at his peak. If you've read all the rest of his works and somehow skipped The Golden Orange, don't feel as though you've missed much. Move along, there's nothing much to see here.

[Edmond Gagnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wambaugh's still got it!
The cast of characters is not as numerous and in depth of his previous work, but they are still colorful and interesting, as is the story. He has you wondering about the plot direction early on, but it doesn't become clear until near the end.
It is then you say to yourself, "Oh yeah, I saw that coming."
A good read!

[Debra Pawlak · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I always enjoy a Joseph Wambaugh book, this one was quite different. I still liked it, but as the story unfolded, you weren't quite sure what it was all about. Entertaining, with Wambaugh style (great characters and side stories), the two main characters seemed to be ambling along--until the very end when he neatly tied it up. I wouldn't recommend this book as one of his best, but if you are a tried and true Wambaugh fan like me, go ahead and read it. Just because.

[Leon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to rank The Golden Orange by Joseph Wambaugh a solid 4 for a personal reason. The story itself might have merited a 3.5 (if that existed), but what put me over was the geography. The story takes place in Southern California and specifically on Balboa Island and in Newport Beach in Orange County. References to my known stomping grounds, to areas of local interest kept me reading with interest. The pier, the ferry, the yacht club, the Wedge were all included. Wambaugh's understanding of the demographics in the area were spot on. The wealth, the divorcees, the boating culture all made the book that much more interesting for me. And of course I won't spoil the story and how Wambaugh wraps up and surprises the reader.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pure pulp here. This book is 100% made to be read on a beach vacation while looking over the ocean. Wambaugh is known for his police novels and while this one has cops and ex-cops as main players, it's not so much a crime novel as crime-adjacent as it mostly just focusses on the foibles of the characters and the interesting locations it uses on the Pacific coast, where levels of richness draw distinct lines through the various sets of characters.

The outcome is pretty obvious a long ways away and the end left me a little "and that's it?" although it did wrap up the story, but for a summer read you can do worse.

[Kristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everything was going along fine until I realized this book hinges on a legal principle that the author did not understand and obviously, from the ending, did not care to fully research.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

As most reviewers have said - not Wambaugh's best - but still a good read. I would highly recommend any of his earlier works such as The Choirboys... well, really, any and all of them.

[Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like a slog, but I’m thrilled I stayed with it. The ending was spectacularly satisfying.

Winnie Farlowe found solace in booze when a bad back forced him to retire from the job he really loved. He had been a cop, and his back injury changed all that. Now, he drinks himself into a state of something close to oblivion as often as he can. That doesn’t detract her from finding him.

She is Tess Binder, a childless three-time divorcee who marries for the money. Her dad died from what looked like a self-inflected gunshot wound. Farlowe can’t figure out what the social-climber rich girl wants with him. But before long, he’s admiring her peachy sheets and everything they wrap around. He even thinks it might be love.

While visiting her house near Palm Springs, someone shoots at Tess and Farlowe. Recognizing that even though he’s not a cop, he still can sleuth things out, he does. And it’s that ending you won’t want to miss. There’s lots of dialogue in here. Much of it is snappy and memorable especially the author’s comparisons. Someone was “as welcome as junk mail.” Another character’s back “had more kinks than a lawyer’s conscience.” These snappy one-liners are common throughout the book and reduce the slog factor somewhat.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pretty nasty depiction of Orange County in the '90s. I grew up there in the 40s and 50s, and it was a great place to live. T. J. Parker does a much better job of describing OC.

Winnie is a drunk ex-police detective and is thrilled that a three time divorcee who is beautiful, smart, lives the life of a society gal on Linda Isle (where John Wayne had his home), wants to spend time with him. She manipulates every event leading to a murder that benefits her while he detects, and he never once questions her actions. Maybe because she makes "killer" omelets? I kept screaming NOOO...OPEN YOUR EYES, but he didn't hear me.

Her gal friends sit the around the yacht club discussing the latest FFH (Forbes Five Hundred) millionaire that has become available, and Winnie's buds sit around a bar sounding like they flunked English while downing more booze than humanly possible. But then this might be the world JW knows.

I gave it an extra star for jogging my memories of the Balboa Fun Zone, the ferry, remembering the Prison Of Socrates Coffee House, Palm Springs, Easter week, and some of the background of Catalina Island.

[Chuckles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winnie is a middle-aged alcoholic former Newport Beach Detective that is miserable and has no direction. He was forced into an early retirement due to his bad back and now drinks his days away. Then he is approached by Tess, who has made a career out of being an OC trophy wife and trying to squeeze everything she can from her divorce settlements. He can't figure out what she wants from him but it really doesn't matter, he is only too willingly along for the ride.

Wambaugh came into the nineties and completely shifted gears into a new style of writing. Golden Orange was a novel in transition to that new style seen in better books like Fugitive Nights and Finnegan's Week, but was still a great book. The stories are more often based on just a few characters, detectives, criminals, usually depict a romance, usually almost as bumbling as the crime and the detectives that are trying to solve it. The snappy dialogue from his more slapstick 70s novels is more witty and clever. We are seeing that style form here. I loved the OC setting, the "Golden Orange". Wambaugh had started to expand his fiction outside of LAPD and the city a little in his previous novel mostly set in the Palm Springs area, and with almost all of his nineties books most were set in other parts of SoCal as done here. Seeing the two sides of the same area was enjoyable; Winnie's world where the "lower class" of Newport and the Golden Orange hang on to mere existence, versus the areas where the elite of Tess's world reside, and you realize many of them are struggling to hold on to what they have as well. (note: for those not from SoCal, OC is large county and most of the county is nothing like these wealthy beach enclaves, eg, Fullerton, Anaheim, even Huntington Beach)

This book is a great fun read. Another one of my favorites, I first read it in the mid to late nineties (I lived in the area much of my life and know it all well), it is spot on for its portrayal of the era and location, so it also can be seen as a great time capsule for Newport Beach and its environs in the 1990s.

[Brian Washines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you're in the mood for a good yarn. So, you remember that author that your mom (rest in peace) glowed about, Joseph Wambaugh. You liked The Choirboys. It had grit in its rain-washed gears. Years later, though, you find some more of his works. A crime author who has history in law enforcement. There's a genuineness to his characters and their speech. The Golden Orange is Wambaugh's startling, Californian sun-drenched story of decadence, romance, and murder. While it careens a bit too far into Vertigo territory rounding third and racing for home, I stay for the ambiance. And yes, there's the crime novel standard of third-act closing exposition before that final reveal at the end (wouldn't have it any other way), so despite these familiar treads I was glad for the momentary distraction. A fine yarn indeed.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

prolific author who knows how to spin a tale; these characters, while one was v. rich, were lost souls and of course one finds his way. Kept me interested; every now and then he has a real way with words that makes you laugh; hardback via 2008 RLB Friends of Library Sale purchases, 1990, 317 pages

[Lynn Porter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Remnants of memories

There is nothing left to say...
You have changed your personality... Someday you will find that you are not lead, but silver. I hope I am still alive to see that happen. The Cedars of Lebanon, still there?

[Stephanie Holz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neighborhood book club selection. Not my typical kind of book and I just didn’t enjoy it that much.

[James Georger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting story with a non standard plot that keeps you wondering through most of the book. I like the dry sarcasm used to describe the SoCal environment, as well as the highly detailed descriptions of the p,aces and events. The characters are three dimensional, and not overdone. The resolution was satisfying to me, and the reason I ordered another of his works.

[Mauro · Rating 5 out of 5]

El final completamente inesperado

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy read. Nothing special. Interesting characters even if one dimensional. A couple of plot twists were not really believable but kept the story moving. I'd recommend it if you had time to waste.

[David McFarlane]

Very slow and laborious

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1990. Comic and deeply moving story of retired policeman Winston Farlowe.

[Jeff]

Fiction

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have enjoyed reading books by Joseph Wambaugh for many years . I liked this book but I feel it was not up to his usual standards

[Scott Swanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little slow at first then it get better. The last of the book is much better.

[Mark Cheviron]

A slow starter, but it came together in the end. Different from some of his books in the past. Nice change up.

[Laura Verdin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it
So many twists and turns
I wanted a happy ending but did not expect this
What a wonderful ride

[Harold Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best book I've read in 2025.

[Lyle Boylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great Wambaugh novel.

[clark holley]

Hated everything about it

[Timothy Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Having lived in Orange County for several years I especially enjoyed this well written book. Some fun twists and turns, definitely recommend