The Duck Theory

Lawrence J. Rupp is the kind of cop who walks into a group of drug dealers in South Los Angeles and pulls up a milk crate for a chat. He's the officer with all the good stories.

Even on his honeymoon in Mexico, on a chartered flight, along with twenty-one other passengers, the new couple's plane crashed into a swamp mixed with sewage water overspill and loaded with hundreds of crocodiles, snakes and leeches.

In his mostly hilarious, sometimes sad, and always honest debut book, "The Duck Theory," Rupp shares a cross-section of some of his most hair-raising experiences on the police force. He describes patrolling the streets on the hunt for crooks; in the world of law enforcement, sometimes the old adage, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's probably a duck," is true-but sometimes it's not. Rupp candidly details having to confront and analyze offenders' daily behavior in order to categorize them as a threat or simply as people enjoying themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Full of stories that could each be its own action movie, "The Duck Theory" will surprise you again and again with its honesty, humor, and insight into the baffling world of Los Angeles crime.