White Sister

June 19, 2006
With his frenetic fifth Shane Scully novel, bestseller Cannell (Cold Hit
) dishes out the action in forklift-sized servings. Casting aside the rules like never before, LAPD detective Scully conducts his own seek-and-destroy mission after his wife, fellow cop Alexa, is found shot in the head. As Alexa clings to life, Scully's efforts to track down her attacker lead him into the violent, vengeful world of rap music, lorded over by two of its most feared executives, Lou Maluga and his wife, Stacy, known in the trade as "the white sister." Without pause to sleep or eat, Scully fights and claws his way along, burning friends, violating laws, using his charm as well as his fists before coming face to face with his enemy in Las Vegas. Cannell's hard-boiled, if at times over-rehearsed prose is well suited to his subject matter, though some readers may have trouble with his hero's tendency to suddenly shift character from tough guy to touchy-feely 21st-century man.

January 1, 2008
In the latest Shane Scully mystery, after Cold Hit (2005), the L.A. police detective has been enlisted by an Internal Affairs detective to find out whether a death-row inmate was framed by the police.This unwanted assignment puts the detective square in the crosshairs of some very powerful enemies. In addition, his wife is making a rocky recovery from her recent near-fatal shooting, making Scullys home life every bit as dicey as his professional one. But, as usual, Scully navigates the stormy waters with style and an implacable, tough-guy attitude. Cannell, who no longer needs to be called a television-producer-turned-novelist, keeps finding new things to do with his trusty protagonist, and, like Michael Connellys similar Harry Bosch series, the Shane Scully enterprise seems destined for a long life. Fortunately, Cannells prose, shaky at first, has improved markedly as the series has evolved; hes still not Connelly by a long shot, but he can play in that league.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)