Rating: 
Summary: Another Adventurous Masterpiece From Stephen J. Cannell
Review: Although I probably haven't read a novel in the past year or so, I have to commend Stephen J. Cannell for bringing the joy of reading a thriller back to me.Shane Scully is a cop on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to his childhood friend commiting suicide and his girlfriend getting all the recognition for his work on a huge case he just cracked showing corruption in the L.A. Police dept., when he's driving down the highway one day and sees his supposedly dead friend driving next to him. After doing some investigative work he discovers that there is a rogue group of cops that have all faked their suicides so they could work off the books. Shane decides to infiltrate the group and delve into the shaddy underground known as the parallel market. In a wonderfully spun web of intrigue and suspense written by Stephen J. Cannell the reader is taken on an adventure that you won't soon forget. I found the book imposible to put down for the 2 heart pounding days that it took me to read it. The book is very well written and easy to read. 2 thumbs up for Stephen J. Cannell on writing this soon to be best seller!!
Rating: 
Summary: "Hooray for Hollywood . . . "
Review: At one end of the mystery noir spectrum you have Michael Connelly and Robert Crais, and at the other end you have Stephen Cannell. And the difference is . . . television. Or, as Tony Filosiani, the ex-NYPD top cop picked up by the founding fathers to lead LA out of its incredible slump might say, 'You ain't gonna find Tolstoy in the rack at the drugstore. Ba-Da-Bing, Ba-Da-Bang.' Truer words and all that. It begins with an old Alfred Hitchcock premise, doomed rebellious (read 'still believing') police officer sees best friend but dead best friend in a random LA traffic snarl. And he must do what doomed rebellious police officers must do. Dig. Scratch. Keep looking. All of Shane Scully's friends, and by the telling of this story they are are few in number, tell him to stop. But Shane can't. And I think we're suppose to feel that this time, Shane will lose what few remaining chances he has to become, well, happy. But Shane can't. He seeks to restore his best friend's death to comprehensible logic (always a herculean task in television) and this leads to dishonest cops, the always present "other" informant on the inside, the Columbian cartel, drugs, silly Amazon women, and all the usual suspects. It's television. Visceral. Visual. Unfulfilling but pleasant in a superficial manner. If I had a feeling of distate, it was not over the repetitive torture or sex scenes, it was with Cannell's flirtation with racial and gender profiling. By now I find tedious that all Italians are overweight and talk like extras in Goodfellows, all African American men have rippling muscles, women are always calmed down by life altering sex (unless they're bad women and then they are evil and satanic), and that all South Americans have beady, black eyes. As Tony would say, 'wazupwitdat?' I like Cannell. But he reminds me of why I stopped watching television. Nevertheless, billions of people watched The Wiseguy, Mannix, The Rockford Files and Starsky. If you go to a poorer country you'll still see those big chested (both genders) heroes and heroines wrestling with the baddest of the bad. In 60 minutes with commercials. So the key here is, again in the words of the soothsayer who brings it all together, Tony Filosiani, 'whatjawannaread?' Cannell tells a good story but it's very superficial. When you read Connelly and Crais, you get a feel for what characters might or even would say. There's nothing like that in The Viking Funeral. It is a great pool read or airplane read. You don't have to work much. But it's like TV. You don't have to work much.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Great Book By Cannell
Review: I have to disagree with the other reviewers; I enjoyed every page of this nail-biter. Cannell's unique writing style really brings the reader into the action. Two thumbs up and five stars for this one.
Rating:
Summary: A Good airport, pool or beach read.
Review: If you like short, tense engaging writing, you will enjoy the first half of Viking Funeral. Stephen Cannell???s bang, bomb, pow writing style is made even more action packed by his use of short, six to ten page, chapters. Cannell is at his best when he takes you into the dark, dangerous ???other??? world of the L.A. police. 'Viking Funeral' starts with a bang, boom, zing and stays that way as long as the story stays in Los Angeles. But the writing loses momentum, and feels disjointed, in the second half of the book. In the second half the cop hunting cops goes down bumpy, dirt roads in Venezuela and Colombia. Somewhere down in South America the story gets lost and bogged down. In an attempt to keep the story moving forward Cannell introduces the character of ex-Colonel Santander Cortez, an Aryan, Argentinean sadist. But the gruesome torture scenes (the ex-colonel peals strips of human flesh from his live, agonizing captives) takes you nowhere. Finally, a rescue and escape back to L.A. Yea. Without giving anything away, the ending is both predictable and sappy; reading like an old Hollywood script where the good guy rides off into the sunset with his true love. That said, this still is a worthwhile airport, pool or beach read. It keeps you engaged enough to be a decent diversion, but not enough where you would miss your flight or the not see the kids in the pool.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, high voltage, on the edge...
Review: Shane Scully from Cannell's Tin Collectors is back in action, this time with beautiful girlfriend and fellow police officer Alexa Hamilton at his side, along with his son Chooch. `The Viking Funeral', while studded with as much action as The Tin Collectors, takes us into the darker side of Shane's loneliness as he questions his own humanity.
Driving down the Los Angeles freeway, Sergeant Shane Scully sees the impossible, his dead friend Jody driving through the traffic. Unable to let the image go, Shane soon discovers that Jody is indeed alive when he is kidnapped by The Vikings, a group of renegade cops who have faked their own deaths and gone deep undercover. Shane must appear that he has gone south with The Vikings, and arranges to fake the shooting of the acting head of the Detective Services Group, his own finance Alexa Hamilton.
Unknown to Shane, Jody has reloaded his weapon with real firepower, and when Shane sees Alexa go down in blood, his world begins to tremble. With The Vikings, Shane gets involved with a cash laundering scheme that stretches from Los Angeles to Aruba to the Columbian border, and with the image of Alexa haunting his dreams and waking nightmares, Shane searches for a thread that will still tie him not only to LAPD but also to his own humanity.
The Viking Funeral is non-stop action, traveling far and wide with an on-the-edge group of psychopathic cops into the deep corruption of the drug markets. I had to re-read The Viking Funeral just to appreciate the depth of the emotionless tomb that Shane almost buries himself in.
Cannell's books read like a movie in my head, his written words easily flowing into images that quickly imbed themselves into my spongy gray matter. It's a gift for an author to achieve this level of visual to his readers, and one that I thank him for having.
Fans of Cannell like myself are going to be overwhelmed with the treat in store with the return of LAPD Sergeant Shane Scully, and if you are new into Cannell, you will need to read The Tin Collectors first to appreciate the full impact The Viking Funeral brings to our everyday hero, Shane. I liked Shane Scully because he is not always right, often has doubts, can be blindly impulsive, and in other words comes across as a real human being rather than a super-hero with a badge. Absolutely great read that will speed you through the pages! Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Good beginning, weaker end
Review: Stephen Cannell, having shown he was adept at writing and creating TV shows, turned to novel writing a few years ago and has produced a number of generally decent mysteries. In his last novel, The Tin Collectors, he introduced his first series character, Shane Scully, who reappears in this book. One day while driving on the freeway, Shane notices his best friend and fellow cop driving nearby. The only problem is that his friend died three years ago by suicide. Already in trouble with his superiors, Shane knows that reopening this case based on a fleeting glance is dangerous, but he can't let things lie. This premise, while not completely original, is at least executed well. In fact, the first half of this novel is pretty exciting. Unfortunately, the second half gets muddled with its complex plot involving the parallel market and the various shady characters involved in this market. In addition, Cannell recycles some ideas from his first novel, The Plan, which also deals with childhood friends who wind up being on opposing sides. The balance of good first half and bad second half is roughly equal, meriting this book an even three stars. If you enjoy Cannell's other works, you should continue with this one, but otherwise, you might want to go elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Shane's back
Review: Stephen J. Cannell brings back Shane Scully from his previous adventure in ‘The Tin Collectors’. Scully lost his best friend and co-worker a couple years ago to an apparent suicide and it hit him pretty hard mentally. He is now suspended from the LAPD. While driving down the freeway, he has no doubt that who he sees is his dead best friend Jody Dean. Scully’s fiancée, Alexa, who happens to also be with the LAPD and is a recent Medal of Valor recipient, thinks Scully has lost his mind. Soon more evidence comes into play and it turns out that Scully was right. There is a group of rogue policemen, some of whom have faked there deaths, that are taking the law into there own hands, as well as making there own laws. Scully infiltrates this group. On the outside, Alexa is handling things. Cannell takes you into the world of money laundering, drugs, and murder, while taking you into the deadly locales of South America. It was an entertaining and easy book to read. It’s not hard to picture a movie out of this story (obviously due to Cannell’s scriptwriting abilities). Good entertainment. Recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre Storyline
Review: The concept of the book is interesting, and the writing is at times compelling. But taken on the whole, the book merits a so-so rating. Read something better if you can find it -- and there are plenty -- read this one if you can't find anything good.
Rating:
Summary: The tough cop is just a bit too wimpy
Review: The storyline in this book is better than its predecessor ("The Tin Collectors"), the concept is amazing (if a bit complicated), the writing is better than average (although the Spanish was overdone). The only problem I had with this book was that Scully went through the whole plot like he needed a hug (Did Jody or his mother love him, blah, blah?). I don't need an emotionless Robocop as my hero, but by the end of the novel I was wondering if his referral to a psych eval wasn't warranted after all. I just picked up "Hollywood Tough," and although I truly enjoy Mr. Cannell's books, I can only hope that Scully can get through this one without needing a support group.
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as others
Review: This is the third 'Cannell' I've read. It has its moments, more good than bad. I think this may have not been my cup of tea. I enjoyed the main plot, a little overloaded with 'street talk' but all in all the story line and tightness seemed pretty good but it lacked something for me. I will read more of his novels, it may be one of those things that throw us all off.
| 
