Rating: 
Summary: Fast Furious & Fun
Review: The newest entry into the series featuring Shane Scully, HOLLYWOOD TOUGH, has Scully & his beautiful wife, Alexa entangled in the world of Tinsel Town heavy hitters and wanna-bees as they set up a sting to trap a mobster. This highly entertaining book offers an insider's look at the film industry with well plotted cops and robbers sequences and action thrills for the most hard-boiled fans as well as subtle humor that hits the mark with the similarities between Hollywood and the mafia. Highly RECOMMEDED
Rating: 
Summary: a highly unprobable yet quite fun and readable story
Review: the story is a wild ride, kinda ridiculous but fun. have read most of cannell's books, there's a format could easily be traced. he's a hollywood insider and trying very hard to write some mob stories. a top-notched storyteller but sometimes inevitably turned his stories into too dime-novel quality and depth. all the stories are quite readable and full of fun but once you have finished them, you just don't want to read them again after, say, 2 years later? like "monte cristo," god, could i believe myself that i've read it again and again at least 5 times during the past 30 years?
Rating:
Summary: Schlocky Sorta Fun
Review: The third book in the Shane Scully series is entertaining, but in a very sloppy, shlocky way-kinda like Cannell's old TV show, "The A-Team". One problem is that there are more plots than you can shake a stick at crammed into the story. The primary one is Scully getting involved with a small time grifter and former informant, turned movie producer, in attempt to set up a prominent East Coast mafia figure. It seems the Mafia is looking to resurrect a scheme from the '30s in attempt to take over Hollywood (and thus LA's economy) via the unions. This is kind of a neat concept, and one almost wishes Cannell had written a book about the '30s scam instead. But instead, he piles on a gang warfare storyline, that involves Scully's son, Bloods, Crips, the Mexican Mafia, and a major shipment of heroin-the lead investigator of which is Scully's wife. And then there's a plot about the rich Hollywood player who's about to marry Scully's wife's best friend-who is he, exactly?Unfortunately, all these subplots are inevitably linked to the main one, which seems rather silly. The book suffers from a mixture of tone throughout. Some of it (like the gang stuff), is very grim, bloody, and realistic. Other parts, such as the East Coast Mafia stuff, is kind of over-the-top "goombah", Sopranos stuff. And the Hollywood parts are the most heavy-handed satire imaginable. And while the cop procedures and lingo are great, some of the Hollywood stuff is definitely not. For example, Scully and his partner are setting up this movie to be made, and the day after signing a big movie star, they have this major A-list director not only on board, but starting production work! Umm, hate to tell you this, but A-list directors have commitments a good two years into the future and aren't immediately available like that. Nor does principal production on big-budget films suddenly ramp up overnight, with set-building and the like. There's a whole lot of preparation work that happens first-but that would have been too hard to make fun of I guess. Finally, the characters are often ridiculously stock. Scully is ruggedly handsome, but doesn't think of himself that way. His wife is the sexiest cop in LA, and tough to boot! Wow. How original. His son? Oh, he's just the starting quarterback for his high school team and is considering scholarship offers to major Division I football programs. C'mon! Why make all your main characters the best and brightest at everything? Oh yeah, and the Chief of Police basically lets them do whatever they dream up and backs them all the way. So, lots of flaws, but not unenjoyable if you're willing to turn your brain off bigtime.
Rating: 
Summary: A fast paced detective series.
Review: This book was my first reading of a Shane Scully novel. It was good enough to entice me to buy the other two novels. Since I read the last book first, it is difficult to compare to the previous novels. This book was very fast paced. It would have helped if I read the other novels first. However, the plot was enjoyable. Cannell has an excellent writing style. Of the three Scully novels, I feel Viking Funeral was the best. I am looking forward to the next installment.
Rating:
Summary: A fast paced detective series.
Review: This book was my first reading of a Shane Scully novel. It was good enough to entice me to buy the other two novels. Since I read the last book first, it is difficult to compare to the previous novels. This book was very fast paced. It would have helped if I read the other novels first. However, the plot was enjoyable. Cannell has an excellent writing style. Of the three Scully novels, I feel Viking Funeral was the best. I am looking forward to the next installment.
Rating:
Summary: Amateur Producers Beware
Review: This is the third Shane Scully book and he seems to at least be trying to settle down to domestic bliss. Or at least he would, if only his job wouldn't keep intruding on his family. Scully seeks revenge on the killer of a hooker, murdered after he had tracked her down for one of his information sources. He is driven by a sense of guilt and responsibility. His most likely is an East Coast mobster who is trying to move in on the Hollywood scene by controlling the movie industry's unions. His method of attack is to go undercover as, of all things, a movie producer. His eyes are well and truly opened and a lot of fun is poked at the Hollywood movie industry when production begins on his movie (which is never meant to get made) and expenses begin to rocket out of control. A parallel story involves an escalating gang-war that his wife (and boss) Alexa, who is head of the Detective Services Group is trying to calm. It soon becomes apparent that the two stories are going to overlap, but how and to what effect remains the mystery. This is another compelling mystery that takes you from the extravagance of the Hollywood movie scene, right down to the mean streets of LA and the gangs who inhabit them. Plenty of action and a grandstand finish helps to make it a very enjoyable read. It has also left plenty of scope for a future Shane Scully book.
Rating:
Summary: Shane Scully cracks the crust of Hollywood
Review: Yes, it's true. Shane and Alexa are back in action, now married and living in Shane's small house in Venice CA with Shane's son Chooch. Alexa's long time friend Nora Bishop is getting married, and after a series of bad boyfriends she has finally landed Farrell Champion, big name movie producer.
When Alexa and Shane attend a party splattered with big name stars at Farrell's house, Shane runs into a no-name street grifter from the streets named Nicky Marcella. Nicky claims to be running a legitimate movie production company named Cine-Roma, and also claims to be partnered with Champion. He asks Shane for a favor in return for all the informing he had done in the past for LAPD, namely, find a girl named Carol White that Nicky wanted to star in his next movie.
Alexa is called away from the party for a big-time gang shooting, and as Shane is leaving separately, he overhears Farrell mentioning something about poisoning his two previous wives. Shane proceeds to find Carol, a used up junkie selling her body for fixes, and also discovers a strange plot to overtake the IATSE union by a mobster named Dennis Valentine from back east. When Carol is found brutally murdered, her death touches Shane deep inside, bring him face to face with the demons that keep him on the police force.
Shane realizes that somehow, Nicky, Dennis, Farrell, and the gang shootings are related, and vows to avenge Carol's useless death by discovering the truth behind the bizarre mob connections in the glamorous world of show business.
While Cannell's `The Viking Funeral' took a turn into the darker side of existence, `Hollywood Tough' makes up for it by skirting along an almost comedic edge of the seedier side of the movie industry. There's a script that makes no sense to be purchased from a Scientology-type religious fanatic, the movie star Michael Fallon who has so many phobias he has to track them on paper, a producer named Paul Lubick who's ego is only outsized by the massive redwood trees he imports for a ceiling shot, and Nicky Marcella's buzz-word wanna-be actions.
This time Shane may have bitten off more than he can chew, and as he slides into his own undercover world of glamour and glitz, he realizes the seductress's pull of the lifestyle and how close he finds himself submitting to its temptations. Also introduced in `Hollywood Tough' is Chooch's girlfriend Delfina, who to me turned out to be disappointingly shallow in comparison to the other brightly painted characters from the story.
Cannell again uses words to graphically sketch a rolling video in my head, the plot folding and twisting around one of my favorite book-cops of all. A fast and energetic read, don't miss out on the Shane Scully books, The Tin Collectors, The Viking Funeral, and now Hollywood Tough. Enjoy!
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