Friday's Forgotten Books - The Bait

Before there was Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell, even before Joseph Wambaugh, Dorothy Uhnak was patrolling the streets of New York City in the 1950s and early 1960s as a New York City Transit Authority policewoman, with 12 of her 14 years as a detective. She later hinted she left police work due to sex discrimination, officially resigning to finish her college degree at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Uhnak had also been interested in writing since she was a child, and was the one who typed up reports for the male police officers because she knew how to type quickly and accurately. She initially had problems getting her autobiographical memoir Police Woman published until editors began to recognize her from newspaper articles as the real-life 125-pound female officer who knocked down and arrested an armed mugger.

Police Woman ushered in Uhnak as the first woman officer to write a police-lady procedural (and was later used as the basis for a series by the same title starring Angie Dickinson), and the book's success led to the first in a trilogy featuring Detective Second Grade Christie Opara, titled The Bait, which won the Edgar Award as the best first mystery novel of 1968 (in a tie with E. Richard Johnson's Silver Street). It later became the basis for the Get Christie Love series, although Uhnak's protagonist was changed from a blond white female to an African-American female, the first time an African American woman was the sole star of a TV series.

The Bait was followed by the other two books in the trilogy featuring Christie Opara, The Witness (1969) and The Ledger (1970), but at the urging of her editors, Uhnak switched to writing a sweeping police novel Law and Order about three generations of a police department family, published in 1973. The latter was her breakout book and became a television move in 1976, with Uhnak helping write some of the dialogue. More fame followed after her 1977 novel The Investigation served as the basis for a 1987 television movie, Kojak: The Price of Justice.

Uhnak says she began notes and doing character sketches for The Bait while still in uniform, with the protagonist, Christie Opara, largely based on the author. She also took characters from her experiences such as the "great bunch of guys" in her squad and the antagonist, Murray Rugoff, who was patterned on a suspect she remembered arresting who had no hair. Her last assignment with the D.A.'s Special Investigations Squad may have been given her the most story fodder, where she "found out the dirty little secrets about the police department."

In The Bait, 26-year-old Christie Opara is on her way to an undercover drug bust when she makes an unexpected arrest of a hairless man who's exposing himself to schoolgirls on the subway. After a female dancer who has been receiving anonymous phone calls is murdered and Opara herself begins to receive similar phone calls, she realizes her suspect and the killer may be one and the same. Realizing there's only one way to prove it, she offers herself up as bait. Her boss, Supervising Assistant District Attorney Casey Reardon, who finds Opara getting under his skin in more ways than one, reluctantly agrees to her idea even knowing that part of Opara's determination to go through with the plan is based on her desire to exorcise demons left behind from the on-duty murder of her cop husband five years ago.

The Bait debuted to mixed reviews when it was published, but it's filled with realistic characterizations and interactions, as you'd expect from someone who walked the walk:

Christie looked from face to face, admiring them; this was all by-play, yet it was essential. An establishing of lines of communication, of reading and responding. No one really knew what story Marty was about to tell, yet each would help him filling in, building on it. It was more than time-passing, it was an interacting on a light and unimportant level: it was a rehearsal.

and

Johnnie Devereaux had a fantastic acquaintance with people in all areas of the city...He could blink his eye and tell in which section of the city, which small, hidden, unknown pocket, you could find a particular group of people, what the ethnic makeup was three blocks to the west or one block to the east. Where to eat authentic Cantonese food, not the American chop suey junk; where to get real Northern Italian cooking or a non-commercial, absolutely pure Kosher meal like someone's Grandma used to put in front of someone's Grandpa. People and their strange quirks of behavior and the fascinating customs and remnants of blood-culture were Johnnie's hobby and a knowledge he enjoyed sharing.

The Bait is an entertaining insider look at police work, especially through the eyes of a woman cop at a time when there weren't many women cops, without getting bogged down into overly technical slang or extraneous procedural details. (One bit of Uhnak/Bait trivia: In 1973, a pilot more faithful to the book, titled The Bait, was filmed. Despite an all-star cast that included Donna Mills, Michael Constantine, William Devane, Arlene Golonka, June Lockhart, it was never produced into a series.)

Sadly, Teresa Graves, star of Get Christie Love, died in a house fire in 2002 at the age of 53, and Uhnak herself  in 2006 of a deliberate drug overdose that may have been suicide, according to her daughter.

Comments

[Patti Abbott]

As always a great review. She was one of the first female crime writers I read.

[Julia Madeleine]

Sounds like a really good read. I used to watch Police Woman when I was a kid. Loved Angie Dickinson. :o)

[BV Lawson]

I'm just sorry she wasn't a more prolific writer, Patti -- that was back before the "must crank out one (or more) a year" era. I'm also sorry she was talked out of continuing the Christie Opara series, as it would have been nice to see it develop.

[BV Lawson]

It was interesting to read a review of the Angie Dickinson series by Dorothy Uhnak, Julia -- apparently she was appalled (and amused) by the liberties they took with her book and the characters; she felt they made the policewoman character totally unrealistic. And yet, at the time it was also considered to be a path-breaking TV show!

[George Kelley]

I enjoyed reading all those Dorothy Uhnak crime novels. THE INVESTIGATION was my favorite of the bunch. Sorry to hear about the sad circumstances of Uhnak's death.

[Yvette]

Great review. I've never read any of Uhnak's work and I wonder why. My only excuse is: I can't read EVERYTHING. :) But I know it's never too late.

Jeez, it's sad to hear about the author's death.

[BV Lawson]

I haven't gotten to "The Investigation" yet, George, but I've read comments from other folks who agree with you. I'll track it down ASAP.

[BV Lawson]

I hear you, Yvette -- My current TBR pile (of actual stacked physical books) is around 50; my TBR list (of others to seek out) is WAY larger, and I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. I really, really should think again about taking that speed-reading course. :-)

[Evan Lewis]

Get Christie Love growing out of this seems more than passing strange.

[BV Lawson]

I agree, Evan! When I checked the book out and did the research and realized the connection, I was astonished to know one was based on the other. Apparently, the studio at the time wanted to take advantage of the "blacksploitation" trend in the 1970s, but it didn't work out that well, since the series only lasted one year.