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.
| 
