Rating: 
Summary: ENERGETIC AND EXCITING READINGS
Review: Veteran voice performer Scott Brick gives an energetic and exciting reading to both the abridged and unabridged versions of Stephen J. Cannell's latest thriller. In an estimable professional career writer Cannell has created over 40 TV series, including The Rockford files, The A-Team, and The Commish. Such a background serves him well as he effortless segued into novel form introducing LAPD Investigator Shane Scully who is often aided and abetted by his wife, Alexa, also with the LAPD. Vertical Coffin, the fourth Scully novel, places Scully in a terrifying role - caught between what are apparently two battling agencies - the Sheriff's Department and the ATF. Trouble began when a psycho with a store of weapons was trapped and evidently killed in his burning house. Shortly thereafter officials of both agencies are shot at and murdered in vertical coffins. With the LAPD the only uninvolved entity Scully enters the case. But before he can untangle the interlocking layers of deceit he finds his hold on life becoming more tenuous with each day. Scott Brick has provided a riveting listening experience. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: ENERGETIC AND EXCITING READINGS
Review: Veteran voice performer Scott Brick gives an energetic and exciting reading to both the abridged and unabridged versions of Stephen J. Cannell's latest thriller. In an estimable professional career writer Cannell has created over 40 TV series, including The Rockford files, The A-Team, and The Commish. Such a background serves him well as he effortless segued into novel form introducing LAPD Investigator Shane Scully who is often aided and abetted by his wife, Alexa, also with the LAPD. Vertical Coffin, the fourth Scully novel, places Scully in a terrifying role - caught between what are apparently two battling agencies - the Sheriff's Department and the ATF. Trouble began when a psycho with a store of weapons was trapped and evidently killed in his burning house. Shortly thereafter officials of both agencies are shot at and murdered in vertical coffins. With the LAPD the only uninvolved entity Scully enters the case. But before he can untangle the interlocking layers of deceit he finds his hold on life becoming more tenuous with each day. Scott Brick has provided a riveting listening experience. - Gail Cooke
Rating: 
Summary: 4 1/2 stars
Review: With his crisp dialogue and his 'pull you in' writing style, Cannell, once again, provides a suspenseful reading experience while keeping the pace brisk. Cannell's experience as a writer definitely shows, for each new novel seems better than the last. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Cannell Just Gets Better and Better
Review: You may never look at a doorway in the same manner after reading this novel. The title refers to the fact that SWAT teams refer to doors in this manner as they are most vulnerable to being shot when they are in one. As this story starts to unwind, a LA Sheriff's Deputy is gunned down as he tries to serve a warrant on a person suspected of harboring automatic weapons. The shooter then barracades himself inside his house and using an AK-47 takes on the Sheriff Department's SWAT along with an ATF SWAT team that arrives on the scene. During a ferocious gun battle, the ATF fires hot gas grenades into the house and it catches on fire which quickly turns into an inferno and then a bunch of massive explosions as weapons and other material in the garage are touched off. End of gun fight. LAPD officer Shane Scully finds himself in the middle of the matter as he has heard the transmissions about the officer being shot and believes it is a friend of his. He was right. Dead right. After the ashes cool the debris yeilds what is left of a burned body in an upstairs bathtub. DNA evidence makes it a perfect match with the shooter. With that aspect of the case closed, recriminations start to fly about what ATF was doing on the scene and why they fired hot gas into the house, endangering the entire neighborhood. It is then discovered that ATF had asked the Sherrif's Department to serve the warrant and didn't advise of the extent of their suspicions about the type of person that was being served. Things go from bad to badder after the funeral of the deputy when the two SWAT teams end up in the same bar with predictable results. Shortly thereafter, one of the ATF officers is shot by a sniper. The evidence begins to pile up indicating a SWAT Unit War and Scully as neither ATF or SD is asked to investigate the matter by the Mayor and get to the bottom of who is doing what. The answer will astound you and I'm not going to give it away. What I will tell you is that Cannell has once again written a real page turner that lacks nothing in the way of action, intrigue and human relationships. (He could stand to brush up on his bridge game terminology, but that's a small matter that I just couldn't resist mentioning.) I'm already looking forward to the next one.
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