Cop Talk: True Detective Stories from the NYPD

There is authenticity in every line of this collection of tales told by New York City detectives. Count (The Hundred Percent Squad) has structured her book carefully. She deals with all the experiences officers face in criminal cases: arrival at the scene of a crime, shoot-outs, working undercover, securing confessions and testifying in court. But she lets the cops themselves give the details. Reconstructed are such newsmaking cases as the 1984 arrest of mob boss Paul Castellano, who was rubbed out-a target of ``street justice''-before he came to trial, and the manslaughter verdict against jailhouse author Jack Henry Abbott who, on his release from prison in 1981, became the darling of the New York City literati before he fatally stabbed a young actor. We also read about many actions that didn't make the headlines-murders, rapes, child abuse, robbery and kidnapping-but to which New York's finest gave their all in in what Count describes as the ``high-profile, high-tension Hollywood of police work.'' (Sept.)