Stephen J. Cannell is still best known to many as the producer behind such TV crime dramas as Baretta, Hardcastle and McCormick, Renegade, The A-Team, The Rockford Files, Wiseguy, and more (many of which often ended with his trademark video logo of himself rolling paper out of a typewriter and throwing it into the air). More recently, he's switched gears to writing crime novels, fifteen thus far, including his LAPD Detective Shane Scully series.
With a Cannell TV episode, you knew pretty much what you were going to get, namely, a lightweight but entertaining adventure in which characters sometimes trend toward one-dimensional and the plot often takes a backseat to the action, but you find yourself getting sucked in anyway due to Cannell's solid storytelling skills. Thus it's not terribly surprising that his latest book follows along those same lines.
On the Grind is the eighth installment in the adventures of Shane Scully, and as the book opens, things have never looked more dire for the detective. Charged with sleeping with a witness—a sexy Hollywood starlet—and trying to cover up by stealing evidence, he's forced to resign. His wife Alexa kicks him out of the house and his son won't have anything to do with him. The only recourse left is to take a job in the small city of Haven Park, a ghetto of illegal immigrants, with a police department so corrupt, it's like a law enforcement cesspool, drawing in every dirty and disgraced cop no other city will touch. Every action revolves around kickbacks (with arms smuggling to boot), coddling the local Latino gangs or protecting the unscrupulous mayor who has a vested interest in having his dystopian empire continue unfettered.
Scully's training and "initiation" is overseen by his new partner, Sgt. Alonzo Bell, even as Scully continues to be dogged by the FBI agent who was involved in his dismissal from the LAPD. Soon he's in so deep, he's being groomed to assassinate the only serious opposition candidate in the upcoming mayoral race, despite the fact that some of his new colleagues don't completely trust him. Therein lies the twist in the plot, which is telegraphed fairly early, so it's not much of a spoiler to add that Scully is in fact working undercover and ends up putting his life on the line to provide enough evidence to close down the corruption mill.
Cannell has a very fine hand with pacing and atmosphere, and the book is certainly a quick read, written entirely in the first-person POV of Scully instead of alternating third-person as he did with early Scully outings. One major quibble would be that the ending is a bit over-the-top as a battered Scully mounts up (literally) to ride to victory. That and a few other implausibiliies diminish the more realistic insider view of the police procedural which had occupied the first nine-tenths of the book, and make the ending feel a bit rushed and wrapped up too neatly. Still, most Scully fans probably won't be disappointed, the kind of book where you just strap yourself in and go along for the ride.
For a book trailer, you can check out this link (there's also a sweepstakes there throughout the month), and for interviews with the author (divided in several parts), including a look at the evolution of the character of Shane Scully, click here.
Comments