Rating: 
Summary: Cannell's a way better screenwriter than novelist
Review: This story gets way too much into police procedures and jargon, and the timelines and details are all screwed up. LAPD Sgt. Shane Scully kills his ex-partner Ray "Steel Tooth" Molar, a super sleaze who is canonized by his fellow cops. Molar was beating his wife, who is also Shane's ex-girlfriend, with a billy club when Shane intervened. There's a "Johnny Dangerously" play ball scene in the Chief's office as a highly political, corrupt process is about to steamroll the befudled Shane. Ex-cop Demarco Saint, now a tattooed, pony tailed, earring wearing, beer guzzling old pedophile living in a shack in Santa Monica, reappears to defend Shane. Sheets, and ex-cop as bad as Molar is head of security for a mega bucks developer who's running hooker parties and blackmailing the Long Beach City Council to turn over the old Navy Yard to his company. Everyone from the Mayor through the Deputy Chief seems to be railroading Shane. His house is machine-gunned and he's kidnapped by helicopter form a movie shoot. Impetuous and vulnerable, the character has potential, but the endless chapters of impossible situations, each chapter titled in a phrase of cop jargon, make this a comic book. That holds true right to the end where after some pretty good shoot 'em up stuff, Alexa and Shane go from Bonnie and Clyde to national heroes. I'll pass on his new one.
Rating: 
Summary: A few holes don't slow the pace
Review: Veteran TV writer and novelist, Stephen J. Cannell ("King Con," "The Devil's Workshop") builds his latest thriller around a brutal, far-reaching police conspiracy. LAPD detective Shane Scully, awakened by his ex-partner's hysterical wife, races over to save her from a savage beating and ends up shooting her husband in self-defense. Though the husband is known for his brutality, he is also something of a hero in department circles. An IAD inquiry which should be open-and-shut turns into a prosecutorial vendetta, complete with Scully's longtime nemesis, ice-queen and ace prosecutor Alexa Hamilton (mid to late-thirties, Alexa must have been amazingly young when she prosecuted Scully 17 years earlier - just one of the novel's noticeable, if minor, holes). Threats escalate to violence as Scully attempts to save himself by doing his own digging. Each unsavory secret he uncovers leads to another, encompassing bigger and bigger fish, ultimately threatening the life of a troubled, angry teen entrusted to Scully's care by his mother, a high-level call girl and police informant. Cannell's writing is slick and easy, his protagonists deep enough to like and his villains more brutish and greedy than clever. He exposes the threads of conspiracy at a pace designed to keep the pages turning, building to an all-stops-pulled climax which manages to involve air, land and sea (okay it's a lake but why quibble?). Like most conspiracies I found this one hard to swallow but the novel is great entertainment and, I must admit, I've read stranger stories of fact.
Rating:
Summary: A few holes don't slow the pace
Review: Veteran TV writer and novelist, Stephen J. Cannell ("King Con," "The Devil's Workshop") builds his latest thriller around a brutal, far-reaching police conspiracy. LAPD detective Shane Scully, awakened by his ex-partner's hysterical wife, races over to save her from a savage beating and ends up shooting her husband in self-defense. Though the husband is known for his brutality, he is also something of a hero in department circles. An IAD inquiry which should be open-and-shut turns into a prosecutorial vendetta, complete with Scully's longtime nemesis, ice-queen and ace prosecutor Alexa Hamilton (mid to late-thirties, Alexa must have been amazingly young when she prosecuted Scully 17 years earlier - just one of the novel's noticeable, if minor, holes). Threats escalate to violence as Scully attempts to save himself by doing his own digging. Each unsavory secret he uncovers leads to another, encompassing bigger and bigger fish, ultimately threatening the life of a troubled, angry teen entrusted to Scully's care by his mother, a high-level call girl and police informant. Cannell's writing is slick and easy, his protagonists deep enough to like and his villains more brutish and greedy than clever. He exposes the threads of conspiracy at a pace designed to keep the pages turning, building to an all-stops-pulled climax which manages to involve air, land and sea (okay it's a lake but why quibble?). Like most conspiracies I found this one hard to swallow but the novel is great entertainment and, I must admit, I've read stranger stories of fact.
Rating: 
Summary: Cannell at his Best! Highly recommended.
Review: Written with thorogh research of the widely known totally corrupted LAPD. Simple and smooth flow of a story that sometimes with basic human emotions. Very good story created, not one bit contrite or make-believe. Clear-cut characters with vivid personalities. Never wasting too much in futile words to portray anybody or anything. Having read all of Cannell's books, only proved that he's the real deal of a good story teller who often delivered crispy sentences, lively dialogues, surprising twists of the plots and still getting better and better. Keep it coming, Sir, and thanks very much for making my boring life not so unbearable.
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