During his career in Oceanside, he was a street cop, a hostage negotiator, a CSI, a homicide investigator, a detective sergeant, and the hostage negotiation team leader. John was considered one of the premier homicide detectives of San Diego County and earned frequent praise from the District Attorney's office. He also possesses in excess of 700 hours in specialized training in such varied subjects as bomb scene investigation, clandestine laboratory investigations, psychological profiling, and link analysis. Finally, John was cited numerous times for superior performance and bravery in the line of duty

John’s Novel, “The Mournful Teddy” is the first in the A Bear Collector’s Mystery series.  The series features a fictional San Francisco Police Department Homicide Inspector, Bradley Lyon, who was wounded in a gun battle and forced to retire.  The character and his wife, move to her childhood home in a tiny rural community in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Now the couple works together making artisan teddy bears and adding to their enormous collection of stuffed animals. Their lives are peaceful and happy until Brad finds a murdered man floating in the river. When the sheriff refuses to investigate the killing, Brad and his wife begin their own inquiry and learn the dead man is connected to the theft of a rare and extremely valuable teddy bear produced to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic.  The follow-on novel, “The False Hearted Teddy,” is set for release in May of 2007.

In another mystery novel, “Echoes of the Lost Order,” Lamb tells us the story of a famous document dictated by General Robert E. Lee that is stolen from the Library of Congress.  Six months later, an unidentified woman dressed in a Confederate uniform is found murdered on a Civil War reenactment battlefield in Talmine, a small Virginia Tidewater town. The events seem unconnected until Talmine's Chief of Police, Steve MacKinnon, and his wife, Victoria, a former police crime analyst, begin to investigate. However, in order to discover the truth behind the killing, Steve and Victoria must place themselves in the line of fire.

John Lamb’s fourth book, “San Diego Specters” is a compendium of local history and investigations into Southern California haunted sites-some celebrated and others more obscure. Although John believes in ghosts, he doesn't believe all ghost stories and isn't reluctant to debunk a haunting when the evidence is lacking.