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Shane Scully book cover 1
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Shane Scully
Series · 11 books · 2000-2011

Books in series

The Tin Collectors book cover
#1

The Tin Collectors

2000

The bestselling novelist and award-winning Hollywood producer weaves a high-tension novel of suspense around a chilling conspiracy of corruption within the LAPD, reminiscent of the classic movie "Chinatown." Inside the department, they're called Tin Collectors: Internal Affairs Agents, the police of the police. If they catch you breaking the rules, they'll come after your badge. If they want you badly enough, they'll collect more than just your tin. LAPD Detective Shane Scully is startled awake in the middle of the night by a call from his ex-partner's wife, who is being beaten by her abusive husband. Racing to their house to stop the fight, Scully ends up killing his ex-partner, a cop who is beloved within the department. Suddenly, Scully finds himself an outcast, shunned by his fellow cops who intend to exact vengeance no matter what the cost. Internal Affairs zeroes in on the "renegade" cop with their sharpest young prosecutor, the ice queen Alexa Hamilton, who has her own reasons for taking revenge on Scully. Desperate to save his career, Scully starts kicking over rocks within the LAPD. What he uncovers is pure evil: a conspiracy going to the very top that ultimately threatens not just his own life but that of a young teenage boy, Chooch, entrusted to Scully's care by his mother - Sandy Sandoval. Known as the Black Widow, Sandy is a beautiful and courageous woman who also happens to be the LAPD's most important undercover informant, and Scully will do anything to keep her son safe. Stephen J. Cannell combines mystery and violence, loyalty and passion in a tale with an ending as unpredictable as LA itself.
The Viking Funeral book cover
#2

The Viking Funeral

2002

If Detective Shane Scully's best friend, Jody Dean, committed suicide three years ago, then who did Shane just see for one fleeting moment on the Ventura Freeway? He's convinced it was his former colleague. Or was his mind playing tricks? Shane's lover, Alexa Hamilton, herself a lauded LAPD officer, happens to think so. But Shane knows what he saw. And for a rogue cop with nothing left to lose, the search for Dean has become more than an investigation. It's become an obsession. The first clue to Dean's secret life—and suspicious death—is murder. The victim is Dean's former commanding officer. The connection taps into a corrupt, high-level conspiracy among L.A.'s finest that will put Shane and everyone he loves in harm's way. It will cut deep into the heart of betrayal and the meaning of friendship. And it will dare one cop already on the brink of madness to take on step further into darkness...
Hollywood Tough book cover
#3

Hollywood Tough

2002

Back on the LAPD and hailed as a hero after taking down a deadly gang of rogue cops in The Viking Funeral, Shane Scully finds himself unwittingly involved in a criminal scheme to take over the movie business. Soon, he will have to go deep undercover to take down a Hollywood conspiracy. At a glamorous party with his new wife, Alexandra, Shane hears a world famous director make an ominous remark about the strange deaths of his ex-wives. This is more than police business, it’s personal: Alexandra’s closest friend is engaged to the producer. When he looks closer, Scully discovers that the director’s mysterious past may hide deadly secrets. To uncover them, he must work alongside a former down-and-outer-turned-Hollywood impresario to infiltrate the movie business’s violent dark side, a world where deals are settled with handshakes but broken with the spilling of blood, and where the danger to Shane’s loved ones is all too real.
Vertical Coffin book cover
#4

Vertical Coffin

2004

The Edgar and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer delivers a high-concept thriller of inter-bureau conspiracy and betrayal A nightmarish series of events sweeps LAPD’s Sergeant Shane Scully and his wife (and boss), Alexa, into the vortex of an enormous, jurisdictional firestorm. First, a sheriff’s deputy, a friend of Shane’s, is gunned down while serving a routine search warrant. His fellow deputies blame the incident on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whom they angrily accuse of failing to warn them that the suspect had a huge arsenal of illegal weapons in his house. Soon thereafter, a member of the ATF Situation Response Team is shot to death, followed by the sniper murder of a member of the Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau. At the request of the Mayor, the LAPD—an uninvolved and unbiased agency—assigns Shane to investigate. He is given an impossible deadline to find a solution before these two elite and deadly SWAT Teams kill each other off amid a hurricane of horrible publicity. Stephen Cannell is one of television’s most prolific and recognized producers. His Shane Scully series has been gaining a growing audience since the publication of The Tin Collectors, and Vertical Coffin is his best outing yet.
Cold Hit book cover
#5

Cold Hit

2005

Shane Scully and his partner are assigned to the case of "the Fingertip Killer"-a serial murderer preying on homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Every two weeks he strikes: he beats his victims, then shoots them in the back of the head. Once they're dead, he cuts off their fingertips, and tosses them in the river. The latest killing, however, does not quite fit the pattern. It appears to be the work of the Fingertip Killer, but Scully suspects an elaborate copycat murder meant to hide a criminal conspiracy. After heavy-handed FBI agents throw him off the Fingertip Killer case, Scully teams up with his wife and boss, Alexa, and a pair of tough cops from the LAPD's anti-terrorism squad. Outside the law and deep undercover, they fight to see justice done.
White Sister book cover
#6

White Sister

2006

Back from the New York Times bestselling Cold Hit, Detective Shane Scully goes up against the beautiful, blonde wife of powerful hip-hop mogul—who stands at the center of a ruthless conspiracy Leaving L.A.'s Parker Center, Shane Scully and his wife, Alexa, agree to meet at home in one hour. Shane gets there; Alexa doesn't. This tale turns deadly, when in the middle of the night, he's called to a crime scene on Mulholland Drive, where the victim, who appears to be a gang member has been handcuffed and executed, gangland style. What's worse is that the victim's body is in Alexa's car. Her service revolver, which Shane discovers nearby, is probably the murder weapon. But Alexa is missing. As Shane desperately tries to find his wife, his leads take him into the frightening world of gangsta rap music and into the center of a feud between two record companies, both heavily manned by Crips and Bloods. At the center of this war is one of the most lethal adversaries he's ever Stacy Maluga, a trashy, beautiful Lady Macbeth-like white woman raised in Compton, married to a multi-millionaire rap mogul and known in the gangsta hip-hop world as the White Sister. Shane is no stranger to big trouble, but he's never had to face being a cop in jail with a hit out on him, while being smeared by urban activists as a "racist cop." Much, much worse than all that is the potential death of his beloved wife, Alexa. In the White Sister, he may have met his match in a powerful and media-savvy enemy who will stop at nothing to forge her own criminal empire.
Three Shirt Deal book cover
#7

Three Shirt Deal

2008

LAPD detective Shane Scully has been struggling in his personal life ever since his wife, Alexa, the department's chief of the detective's bureau, was shot in the head and developed erratic mood swings. Secada Llevar, a sexy investigating officer for internal affairs, corners Scully and demands his help in reopening a homicide; she believes Tru Hickman, convicted of killing his mother to support a meth habit, was railroaded by some corrupt cops, but she has been ordered by her superiors to drop her inquiry. Scully joins her probe and uncovers high-level corruption, possibly connected with an impending mayoral election, while struggling with his attraction to Secada.
On The Grind book cover
#8

On The Grind

2009

Charged with felony misconduct in a high-profile solicitation of murder case, Lieutenant Scully is faced with an impossible decision: either quietly resign from his job as a detective for the LAPD, the work he loves, or face criminal prosecution. Rather than smear the department's reputation and his own, Scully chooses to leave. His colleagues of years feel betrayed to learn that a dirty cop has been in their midst. His wife, Alexa, the chief of detectives, leaves him, seeking a divorce for his dalliance with the accused in the case, a beautiful, well-known Hollywood actress. His son, Chooch, horrified by these events, won't even speak to him. Life as Scully knows it is over. Or so it seems . . . In order to make a living the only way he knows how, Shane seeks employment from a police department that has been known to hire rejects from other departments: the Haven Park PD. Haven Park is an incorporated city near downtown Los Angeles, just one square mile in size and populated almost entirely by Mexican immigrants, most of them illegal. The department is a hotbed of corruption, in effect the personal goon squad and collection agency of the town's mayor, Cecil Bratano. Ushered into the department by his new partner, Alonzo Bell, Shane takes his lessons in policing from one of the dirtiest cops around. But things in L.A. are hardly ever what they seem. Relentlessly harassed by an over-zealous FBI agent, the alluring Ophelia Love, and under the constant, violent, and hyper-paranoid scrutiny of his new comrades-at-arms, Shane finds himself in snare a far greater than any he could have expected. His estranged wife may be the only one who can get Shane out of this mess alive. The question is: Is she willing to do so?
The Pallbearers book cover
#9

The Pallbearers

2010

From the perennial New York Times bestseller comes a powerful new novel in which Detective Shane Scully, who grew up as an orphan, must revisit his painful childhood to find out who murdered the kind and charismatic man who became a father to him Abandoned by his parents as an infant, Scully was reared in an orphanage, Huntington House. The only positive thing in his young life was the attention of the Home’s director, Walter “Pop” Dix. Pop, an avid surfer, would take a small group of kids for early morning surfing. He was the father none of them had ever had. That was thirty years ago. Now, Shane is forced to revisit these memories when Pop is found dead, the victim of an apparently self-inflicted shotgun blast. He leaves a message asking six specific people, all of whom attended Huntington House, to be his pallbearers, and Shane is one of the chosen. He and his fellow pallbearers don’t believe it was a suicide. That leaves murder. But why, and by whom? Together, the pallbearers embark on a dangerous odyssey in pursuit of justice for Pop, and for retribution against those responsible for his death. Their journey takes them up against an unforeseen adversary whose power and influence far exceed anything they could have imagined.
The Prostitutes' Ball book cover
#10

The Prostitutes' Ball

2010

Detective Shane Scully responds to a call in the Hollywood hills at a once-immaculate mansion, the scene of an infamous murder twenty-five years prior. He discovers the remnants of a lavish pool party. The revelers have fled, leaving three dead bodies in their wake, all shot with the same gun. One is an acclaimed film producer. The other two, a pair of gorgeous women. With his new partner, Sumner “Hitch†Hitchens, Scully begins to investigate what looks to be an open-and-shut case: The women were hired prostitutes, and there’s security video of an angry husband firing on all three. A simple case of brutal revenge. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems: There’s a single spent bullet casing that doesn’t match the rest.  From that single bullet emerges a story of love, murder, suicide, and one of the biggest financial frauds in L.A. history. Someone has gone to great lengths to cover up a decades-old crime, and as Scully and Hitch get closer to the answer, they find themselves in a killer’s crosshairs.
Vigilante book cover
#11

Vigilante

2011

In the last novel by acclaimed producer and New York Times bestselling author Stephen J. Cannell, LAPD detective Shane Scully and his partner Sumner Hitchens investigate a crime with ties to the sometimes violent world of reality TV Lita Mendez was a thorn in the LAPD's side. An aggressive police critic and gang activist, she’d filed countless complaints against the department. So when she's found dead in her home, Detective Scully and his partner Hitchens fear the worst: that there's a killer in their ranks. Outside the crime scene, Nixon Nash and his television crew have set up shop. Nash is the charismatic host of a hit reality show called "Vigilante TV," dedicated to beating the cops at their own game: solving murders before they can. Now he has the murder of Lita Mendez in his sights. He presents the detectives with a choice: either join his team, or prepare for a public takedown. But Scully knows that Nash isn't the folk-hero he seems. He will do anything in the name of self-promotion. If a detective got in his way, would he be prepared to kill? In this new novel, Scully will have to risk everything save himself and the job he loves.

Author

Stephen J. Cannell
Stephen J. Cannell
Author · 20 books

Stephen J. Cannell was an American television producer, writer, novelist, and occasional actor, and the founder of Cannell Entertainment (formerly Stephen J. Cannell Productions) and the Cannell Studios. Cannell created or co-created several successful TV series from the 1970s to the 1990s. Creations included The Rockford Files, The A-Team, The Greatest American Hero, 21 Jump Street, and The Commish. He was an Emmy winner and was awarded The Eye - Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.

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