The Choirgirls : FINNEGAN’S WEEK, <i> By Joseph Wambaugh (William Morrow: $22; 352 pp.)</i>

No one writes novels about police work with more color, ribald comedy and affection than Joseph Wambaugh. The cops who inhabit his stories are complex anti-heroes, plagued with anxieties from living on the edge. They are burnouts and emotional casualties who take refuge from the daily parade of human wickedness in the barroom or the bedroom.

Or, as in his latest novel, “Finnegan’s Week,” he uses his talent to entangle his characters in a farcical web of circumstances.

With 14 books under his belt, the ex-cop turned author appears incapable of producing a bad one. Perhaps his success stems from embracing the old adage: Write about what you know. Since 1970, when he penned his first book, “The New Centurions,” that’s exactly what he has done, and a steady stream of bestsellers has followed.

Wambaugh’s early efforts were written while he worked full-time as a detective with Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart division. Fourteen years on the force gave him plenty of grist for the writing mill. In 1974, after three successful books, he turned in his badge and took up the pen full-time.

A consummate storyteller, Wambaugh employs searing wit coupled with imaginative plots, raunchy conduct and incredibly inventive black humor. But always, he writes about cops. It doesn’t matter if they are L.A. cops, border patrol cops, British cops or desert cops, they share a common thread. All are weary foot soldiers trying to stay on the side of right and maintain their sanity through uproarious behavior.

Wambaughphiles, like myself, have come to expect a cast of raucous, neurotic cops, those walking-wounded law officers with names like the Weasel and the Ferret, the grungy narcs of “The Glitter Dome” or the Bad Czech and Rumpled Ronald from “The Delta Star.”

The fiction he wrote in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s was uproariously funny, and for me, his most defining work.

In a 1983 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Wambaugh said: “When I wrote ‘The Choirboys,’ (1975) I found my voice, which I think probably is to do realistic fiction that’s serious but to do it in a black comedic style, using the weapons of satire and caricature and comedy.”

That voice, once energized by rage and acute observation, has mellowed somewhat in his later books, probably because he’s been distanced from police work for almost 20 years.

While Wambaugh generously credits the professionals who keep him updated on cop talk and anecdotes for his books, his second-hand voice lacks much of the tension and punch that was present in his earlier works.

This is the case in his 10th novel, “Finnegan’s Week,” a zany tale of toxic waste gone awry and the case of the stolen Navy flight-deck shoes.

San Diego police detective Finbar Finnegan, a 45-year-old aspiring actor and three-time loser in the marriage department, is assigned to track a 55-gallon drum of hazardous waste that has been stolen on route to the dump site.

Finnegan teams up with two female law enforcement officers in this romp that takes him from San Diego biker bars to Tijuana’s black market.

Nell Salter, 43, a “sludge drudge,” or “goop cop,” works as an environmental crimes investigator in the district attorney’s office, where all hazardous waste is referred to as “methyl-ethyl-bad-(expletive).” Her 14-month marriage to her high school sweetheart ended when one night after a drunken row when he punched her in the face, breaking her nose. She thinks it was the only good thing he ever did for her. The slightly bent nose was sexy indeed. “Other female cops told her that if they could get a nose like that they’d date Norman Mailer. In more recent years they changed it to Mike Tyson.”

Energetic U.S. Navy sleuth Bobbie Ann Doggett, 28, nicknamed “Bad Dog,” frets about being 10 pounds past being “bikini-secure” and has to “shoehorn her hips into a mulberry slim-skirt.” She is trying to solve the theft of 2,000 pairs of black, steel-toe, high-top regulation flight deck shoes from a Navy warehouse.

Naturally, the two crimes are connected.

Zinging home a host of one-liners, Wambaugh’s detailed descriptive sense is better than ever. Consider these richly textured descriptions.

“Nell regularly jogged along the Embarcadero . . . loving the spangled sunlight that ricocheted off the bay and caressed her bare legs. No headset for Nell; she liked to hear the groans of sailboats straining at their moorings and the zing of halyards against the metal masts.”

But despite his wonderful use of imagery, “Finnegan’s Week” lacks the rawness of a cop on the beat, a place Wambaugh details so well.

And too, as masterful as Wambaugh is with his characters, his female cops need work. Women have played a role in his previous books, but this is the first time I recall his giving them as much weight as the men. Unfortunately, these women think and sound too much like their male counterparts.

For instance, when one of Nell’s colleague comments that she doesn’t look good, she retorts, “Too much caffeine. . . . I’m so amped I could jump-start Frankenstein’s monster.” Or on the same page, she looks in the mirror and thinks, “her tongue needed a shave.” The terms jump-start and needed a shave land squarely in the male metaphor category.

But I have faith in Wambaugh. Eventually, he will write a book where the central character is a woman and she will be as engaging and as unforgettable as his macho male cops because Wambaugh is a powerful writer equipped with genuine style and originality, and like the Energizer Bunny, he just keeps on going.