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08.04.2008
The Palace Guard is made available for the first time
online

Purchase your own copy today for only $25

 

 

View other works of
Charles N. Guthrie

 

When Charles N. Guthrie was a San Diego Police Officer he wrote The Palace Guard which is an allegory about the administration of police departments.

When the book originally came out in 1974, Guthrie telephoned one of the largest book stores in San Diego, asking how his book was doing. The clerk told him that they had placed the book in the front window and it was selling like hot cakes. In fact, the clerk wasn’t sure they had
any left because they had sold so many. Then the book store clerk suspiciously questioned whether Guthrie had really written The Palace Guard. “Of course I wrote it,” Guthrie indignantly responded and drove down to see his book in the front window of the book store. When he arrived and looked in the display window he didn’t see his book and instead saw a strange looking book entitled The Palace Guard. To his
disappointment, The Palace Guard in the display window was not the book he had written. It was a totally different Palace Guard, written by someone named Dan Rather.

Since then, Guthrie’s Palace Guard has been used in police administration classes, public relations classes, and as a gift to police officers for over 30 years. Idealistic, honest police officers hold our society together. At two o’clock in a dark alley it’s the police officer for a few moments who could if he wanted play the role of god, king, and jury. Society extends the trust of upholding the law to these young men and women. The Palace
Guard is about the environment and motivations that make police officers tick.

 

Mr. Guthrie says that: Working on the San Diego Police Department from 1967, Wood stock and the Summer of Love, into 1973, the war protests, drugs and Republican Convention, was the most interesting time in his life. It was an honor to work with and around the officers of the San Diego Police Department.