Stalking a Thriller : Writing: Novelist and new Rancho Santa Fe resident Joseph Wambaugh would like to dig up his next crime plot in his own back yard.

Joseph Wambaugh is looking for work. He’s wandering around his new home in Rancho Santa Fe, perusing local magazines, consulting daily papers.

But it’s not the help-wanted ads he’s interested in. Wambaugh is reading the crime stories, the cops-and-robbers stuff--anything from offhand items about floating bodies and unsolved murders to major scoops on law enforcement graft and wayward cops--the makings of a real-life police thriller.

Wambaugh, the ex-Los Angeles cop turned hugely successful crime writer, is prowling for fodder for a new book--or, as he calls it, a new job. His string of best-sellers include The Choirboys, The Onion Field, The Blooding and The New Centurions.

Following the recent publication of his last novel, The Golden Orange, a satire of the Newport Beach jet set that angered many fellow Orange County residents, Wambaugh has moved on to new turf in the North County enclave of Rancho Santa Fe.

In April, he and Dee, his wife of 33 years, moved into a 7,000-square-foot hacienda to begin what Wambaugh hopes will be the newest chapter in a successful writing career, one that produced a dozen books on crime and intrigue in settings from San Diego to Pennsylvania to England.

But, like any other writer between jobs, Wambaugh is getting restless. For an author used to spending up to eight hours at the typewriter, seven days a week, the whole afternoons he now spends reading books and walking the dogs are making him anxious for a new project to materialize in his head.

“When I tell people I’m looking for a job, they’ll usually just laugh,” said the 53-year-old author as he sipped a glass of ice water in his expansive kitchen.

“I may not be out knocking on doors, but I’m still on the prowl for any new ideas that might produce an idea to get a novel going.”

In recent weeks, Wambaugh has spent time talking with local cops or taking them for a cruise aboard Bookworm, his 27-foot power boat.

Some are the same San Diego officers Wambaugh consulted before writing Lines and Shadows, his 1984 nonfiction book on the San Diego Police Department’s controversial task force that dealt with the growing crime problem along the international border here.

Dressed in blue jeans, sneakers and a soccer-style sport shirt, Wambaugh, graying but bright-eyed, says he still feels at home with cops, relishing at the retelling of their gossip and war stories, the tales often told through a haze of alcohol.

After spending 14 years as a Los Angeles police officer, retiring in 1974 to the rarefied life of a million-dollar writer, Wambaugh said he has spent enough time in squad cars and dingy police headquarters.

But he can’t seem to get enough of the boys in blue, their humor and camaraderie. He knows that old allegiances die hard.

“I just like hearing some good old locker room-type gossip,” he said. “Most of these guys know that. So they embellish and turn themselves loose on their stories. But that’s OK.”

While writing The Golden Orange, Wambaugh often consulted San Diego cops for police yarns to weave into his Orange County narrative. In fact, he prefers many things about San Diego to Orange County.

As a boat owner, he believes San Diego Harbor to be among the most beautiful in the country. As a motorist and homeowner, he thinks San Diego County beats its neighbor to the north, hands down.

“Orange County is just a traffic jam, a 16-hour-a-day traffic jam,” he said. “I just got sick of it. I mean, you can still get in and out of downtown San Diego during rush hour.

“I’m not used to having my car actually move during rush hour. I’m used to sitting there, hoping that the guy in the next car doesn’t get frustrated, pull out a gun and blow my head off.”

And so far, at least, Wambaugh likes what he’s seen of Rancho Santa Fe. On drives through the area while renting a condominium in Solana Beach a few years back, Wambaugh and his wife knew right away what Rancho Santa Fe and its residents stood for. It’s a conservative area where people mind their own business, he said.

“Orange County is so transient, you never even got to know your next-door neighbor,” he said. “There’s no esprit de corps there. Here in Rancho Santa Fe, they’re gung-ho about ‘the ranch.’ You only have to pick up a paper to find that almost everyone in town has a very local issue that they’re grappling with.

“I like the small-town friendliness here, that sense of people being involved in their community. Where I’m from, nobody knows their neighbors or even who their councilman is. They’re too busy getting a divorce, getting rich, going broke or running off with their manicurist.”

He doesn’t expect to become too involved in local issues at “the ranch” or press the flesh at weekend cocktail parties.

“I’m a writer right down to the toenails,” he said. “That means I’m a loner. I probably should get more involved. But I’m uncomfortable with large groups of people doing anything. I don’t socialize much. I pretty much mind my own business.”

Except when he’s out doing research. Then Wambaugh starts asking questions. He reverts to being the tough cop and investigative reporter who has produced tales of international intrigue and vignettes of America from its mean streets to its country clubs.

“People always accuse me of questioning them a little too closely about things, and I probably do it without noticing it,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of years interrogating people. It’s a habit, sometimes a bad habit. I go too far.”

When he’s through asking tough questions, Wambaugh starts writing. He retires to a darkened room with his IBM typewriter for the grueling daylong sessions that usually produce a book in about six months.

“I like the dark when I write,” he said. “I like gloomy places. I like having the overhead lamp on in the middle of the day. Maybe I read too many romantic novels as a kid, too much Edgar Allen Poe.”