NONFICTION - June 7, 1992

POLICEWOMAN ONE by Gayleen Hays with Kathleen Maloney (Villard Books: $20; 256 pp.) In a most unfortunate bit of timing, this memoir of a 20-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran comes on the heels of the King riots--which makes the happy-go-lucky story of a smart-alecky lady cop seem embarrassingly superficial. Hays likes to reminisce about the good, and bad, old days, usually in the snappy style of someone who has done one too many interviews and knows exactly what outrageous thing to say to get the laughter, or the tears. And she has had her share of headlines, over the years, as well as a guest shot on the Johnny Carson Show when she was named “Miss Fuzz� as part of a movie-studio publicity tie-in. What seems to be an effort to humanize the guys and gals on the force comes off, instead, as a trivialization, just at a time when the city yearns for better communications between police and community. Most frustrating of all, Hays is capable of the sort of bold, straightforward storytelling that would have made this a compelling book, had she not retreated so often into glibness. Her description of how she interrogates two little girls whose father is suspected of abuse is heart-wrenching, and her showdown with a brutal husband who has ignored his wife’s restraining order and chased her right into a police station is brave and funny at once. She need not have worked so hard to entertain us. The truth would have sufficed.