The New Centurions (1971), is a novel by American writer Joseph Wambaugh. It explores the stresses of police work in Los Angeles, California, in the early 1960s. The author wrote the novel, his first, while he was still a working member of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The novel was adapted as a film of the same name starring George C. Scott and Stacy Keach.

Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. is a best-selling American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Many of his novels are set in Los Angeles and its surroundings and feature Los Angeles police officers as protagonists. He won three Edgar Awards, and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.