Vertical Coffin

With VERTICAL COFFIN, Stephen J. Cannell has added another winner to his list of award-winning novels and television shows. This title is Cannell's latest thriller featuring LAPD detective Shane Scully, whose acumen is put to the test when he investigates why LA sheriffs and ATF agents appear to be shooting each other. Scott Brick's reading is the latest in a string of superb performances. Brick's ability to inject irony and wit into the novel adds to his performance, particularly because his sense of timing is impeccable. The only drawback is that there's quite a bit missing from this abridgment. A shame. D.J.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

January 19, 2004
The title of the latest entry in Cannell's Shane Scully LAPD series (Hollywood Tough
; The Tin Collectors
; The Viking Funeral
) is police jargon for any doorway, which is where cops are most vulnerable when clearing a house. As the novel begins, Shane stumbles into a full-scale barricade shootout between gunman Vincent Smiley and surrounding police. After one of two competing SWAT teams at the scene burns down the barricaded house with Smiley in it, a fight over who is to blame begins to smolder. Several subsequent cop shootings (with all victims caught in the aforementioned vertical coffins) fan the SWAT team turf tussle into a conflagration that Shane and wife Alexa, the acting head of the LAPD Detective Services Group, are assigned to investigate. Shane, an old school detective, insists on starting from zero and looking into shooter Smiley's past. Everyone else wants him to forget the gumshoe routine and come up with an instant solution. The pleasure of Cannell's work isn't in the writing ("Bullets whined and ricocheted in a deadly concert of tortured metal"), but lies more often in the interesting procedural elements ("It's very hard to protect a crime scene, so I always start at the far edges first, and work in toward the body"). Shane's still a little rough around the edges, but despite too many pop psychology musings, he's a dependable and satisfying character. Readers will enjoy watching him puzzle out the twists and turns of the plot and watch breathlessly as he undertakes a climactic high-speed chase in a souped-up dune buggy on a military shooting range. (Jan.)

Forecast
: It's no surprise that Cannell's novels have a cinematic bent as he's the creator or co-creator of 38 television shows and author of more than 350 scripts for these shows. Solid publisher backing and a built-in fan base should push this one onto some best seller lists.

This audio publisher was smart to again pick Scott Brick to play Shane Scully. He fits the bill to a tee. A tough, judgmental L.A. cop, Scully is assigned to investigate the death of a sherrif's deputy and, subsequently, a rival ATF agent. Naturally, members of each department suspect the other in the unexplained deaths. In this, the latest, best, and most confusing of the Scully thrillers, Brick plays Scully in a terse, businesslike manner. Yet he winds down appropriately when describing a vivid scene or emphasizing a character's humor. Brick is Scully and always should be. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine