The Viking Funeral

Rating:
Summary: This one's a dud!
Review: I suppose it had to happen. Stephen Cannell finally wrote a book that failed miserably in living up to our expectations of his story telling ability. The story is plodding and difficult to stay with, although I did finish it just to see if it would get better. Alas, no.

The central characters of Shane Scully and Alexa Hamilton fail to interest...the "Vikings" are an unbelieveable lot of misfits. The "scheme" that they are pursuing of making a killing, both literally and figuratively in the "parallel market" is hard to follow and equally difficult to believe.

The bodies are stacking up like cord wood as you work your way through the book, but you find yourself not caring that much and just waiting for the quite predictable ending. I hope this is the last book of the "Shane Scully genre and that Mr.Cannell can once again take us to more interesting scenarios in the future.

Rating:
Summary: a boring, confusing, dud
Review: i'm only on page 150, but this book already has had more non-sequitors and confused events than I can count. At this point, I will move on to something else.

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: 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: Disappointing
Review: In THE VIKING FUNERAL, Stephen J. Cannell continues the story of Sergeant Shane Scully. In THE TIN COLLECTORS, Scully's first appearance, he brings down a group of corrupt cops, the Chief of Police and the mayor of California. The LAPD is in turmoil and now trying to come back from the ashes. Scully has a better relationship with his son and is happily dating Alexa Hamilton, an ally from the previous novel. His life drastically changes one day when he sees his 'dead' friend driving on the highway.

He learns that several policemen have faked their own deaths to form part of a team called the Vikings. Shane, Scully, and the new Chief of Police set up a plan to infiltrate the group. As the plan takes place, Scully is forced to kill Alexa and run for his life while working with the Vikings.

Once the reader learns the Vikings true mission, the novel starts to go downhill. The Vikings are involved in a complicated and bit convoluted money-laundering scheme. The principals of this caper are all caricatures and stereotypes who do not have any personality, just role in the play. It is hard to identify with the criminals and it gets to the point that one does not really care. There is no smooth flow in the reading and there were times that I had to reread specific chapters. I have read other Cannell novels that I enjoyed. I prefer that he continues writing stand-alone novels instead of continuing a series with Scully. I feel the sergeant lacked a focus in the novel.

Rating:
Summary: It's about as memorable as yesterdays dinner ....
Review: OK so I bought into the hype about a hot hot novel with super corruption revalations about American big biz tobbacco industry and instead I got a rerun of the A Team 'in print' no less ....

To say that our hero, Shane Scully, lacks depth of character would be an understatement and I can understand why he's ready for the rubber room. I can't realy say that I even like the villan, Jody, another cadiadte for the funny farm. When we get to the tobacco conspiracy issues we are in the middle of the book and the author gets really pretty fuzzy here....

I mean where's the big secret, a few years ago Colombia had a member of government that was known as congressman Marlboro ...

Sorry the only thing biting and gripping in this book has to be the price I paid for it .....

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: Give this one a funeral
Review: Stephen Cannell may have provided the story line for The Viking Funeral, but he should read his book and think about taking it off the market. It's bad writing from page 1. I continued reading to look for something of value, but found nothing. I have never in my long life encountered a 15-year old boy who not only latched onto his previously unknown father but nagged him to replace his dead mother with a vulgar mouthed girlfriend. Scully's son is as unbelievable as the rest of the characters in this novel. What could have been a good plot was thrown together haphazardly and poorly written. Mr. Cannell should look up the word verisimilitude.

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: 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.