Stephen J. Cannell Books In Order

Shane Scully Books In Publication Order

  1. The Tin Collectors (2000)
  2. The Viking Funeral (2002)
  3. Hollywood Tough (2002)
  4. Vertical Coffin (2004)
  5. Cold Hit (2005)
  6. White Sister (2006)
  7. Three Shirt Deal (2008)
  8. On The Grind (2009)
  9. The Pallbearers (2010)
  10. The Prostitutes’ Ball (2010)
  11. Vigilante (2011)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. King Con (1981)
  2. Final Victim (1995)
  3. The Plan (1995)
  4. Riding The Snake (1998)
  5. The Devil’s Workshop (1999)
  6. Runaway Heart (2003)
  7. At First Sight (2008)

Shane Scully Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Stephen J. Cannell Books Overview

The Tin Collectors

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

Driving along the freeway, Shane Scully glances over and sees Jody Dean, his oldest friend and LAPD colleague, at the wheel of an adjacent car. Why is Scully so surprised? Because it’s been two years since Jody committed suicide in the Rampart Division parking lot by blowing his brains out with a service revolver. Shane served as a pallbearer at the funeral. What Scully will discover is that Jody and five other cops who are supposed to be dead are anything but; originally sent deep undercover to bust an extremely violent criminal network, they have become the LAPD’s worst nightmare. Calling themselves the Vikings, they are rogue cops who know how the system works. In order to penetrate the group and set his cover, Scully is supposed to shoot his fianc e, Alexa. The setup goes awry and Shane finds himself looking down at his future wife’s body. He is soon driven into the corridors of near madness and into the bed of an extremely beautiful and utterly ruthless corporate seductress who threatens to destroy his soul. Shane’s desperate and deadly undercover journey takes him from the embrace of Alexa and his teenage son, Chooch, to the Caribbean island of Aruba to the decadence of Columbia’s opulent palaces and the desperation of its deadly streets. Sergeant Scully is driven to the psychological brink, his life in the hands of the most dangerous killer he’s ever known his closest childhood friend.

Hollywood Tough

A Shane Scully Novel by the Bestselling Author of The Tin Collectors and The Viking FuneralEmmy Award winning writer producer Stephen J. Cannell sets his next pulse pounding thriller in the high stakes world he knows best Hollywood! In Hollywood Tough, organized crime attempts to take over the film craft unions. Detective Shane Scully is back in the good graces of the department, hailed as a hero after bringing down a deadly gang of rogue cops in The Viking Funeral. At a glamorous Hollywood party with his new wife, Alexa, Shane overhears a famous producer make a suspicious remark about the strange deaths of his two ex wives. Is he serious or merely joking around with his coterie of hangers on? This becomes more than just police business, because the party is to celebrate the engagement of the producer to Alexa’s closest friend. Against his wife’s wishes, Shane begins to look into this heavy hitter’s past. At the same time, he becomes aware of a high profile wiseguy’s attempt to control Hollywood’s unions. He initiates an elaborate and expensive sting operation, actually setting up a phony production company to produce a bogus movie at LAPD expense. The plan is to draw the starstruck wiseguy into revealing his real purpose for coming to L.A. But before long the overbudgeted movie is rocketing into production. Tough, streetwise Scully, who thought he’d seen just about everything, is astounded by the distorted egos and total insanity of the movie business, and while he struggles to keep his sting operation from spinning wildly out of control, he and Alexa find themselves and Shane’s teenaged son, Chooch, involved in something much bigger than they had ever imagined, something that puts all their lives on the line.

Vertical Coffin

The Edgar and Emmy Award winning writer and producer delivers a high concept thriller of inter bureau conspiracy and betrayalA 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

Cannell delivers non stop action and intrigue in the latest installment of his New York Times bestselling Shane Scully series

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, closes their eyes, 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. A bullet pulled from the victim’s skull produces what police call a Cold Hit, an unexpected ballistics match linking one unsolved case to another, and the previous victim was an LA Police officer, killed ten years earlier.

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 for the slain officer, and, possibly, to unravel a murderous plot with connections high up in the Homeland Security office.

White Sister

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 encountered: 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

Truit Hickman is a small time crook doing life in California’s notoriously brutal Corcoran State Prison for the murder of his mother. He admitted to the crime, but now Hickman claims his confession was coerced by the cops. A beautiful Internal Affairs detective, Secada Scout Llevar, asks Shane to help investigate, and he agrees after learning the original homicide detective was Brian Devine, a ruthless cop with whom Scully has a bad history. What begins as a routine review quickly turns into something much more deadly. The case is abruptly shut down by an LAPD deputy chief, and Shane begins to suspect that for unknown reasons Hickman really may have been framed by the police. But some things, once started, cannot be stopped, and the investigation spirals dangerously out of control, implicating a violent Hispanic gang, a millionaire power broker, and the front runner in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Meanwhile, Shane and Alexa struggle to save their marriage, which has come perilously close to disintegration since Alexa s near fatal shooting in White Sister just as Shane finds himself attracted to his new partner. Could the answer to their marital troubles be tied to the case he s investigating? In Cannell s heart pounding thriller, Shane is tried in ways he has never been, risking his family, his job, and his life.

On The Grind

On the heels of Three Shirt Deal, a New York Times bestseller, comes an electrifying new thriller from Stephen J. Cannell in which Lt. Shane Scully is accused of evidence tampering and his wife, Alexa, discovers Shane’s been having an affair with a beautiful movie star.

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

Abandoned by his parents as an infant and shunted from one foster family to another, Shane was ultimately raised in an orphanage called 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 big hearted, patient, and the father none of them had ever had. That was thirty years ago, and Scully long ago put that difficult chapter of his life behind him. He is now an accomplished detective, married to Alexa, the gorgeous lieutenant and acting commander of the LAPD detective division. But Shane is forced to revisit the memories of his childhood when he learns that Pop has been found dead, the victim of an apparently self inflicted shotgun blast. He has left a note 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 are convinced Pop would never have killed himself. That leaves murder. But why would anyone kill Pop? And who?Together, The Pallbearers embark on a dangerous mission in pursuit of justice, and for retribution against the men responsible for Pop s death. It takes them up against an unexpected adversary whose power and influence far exceed anything they could have imagined violent, dangerous men who are determined to keep a lid on the secret behind Pop s death, no matter who gets in their way.

The Prostitutes’ Ball

It’s a few days before Christmas when Detective Shane Scully and his wife, Alexa, respond to a call in the Hollywood Hills. The crime scene is the pristine backyard swimming pool of a once immaculate mansion on Skyline Drive, the site of an infamous murder decades prior, in which a family was killed in cold blood on Christmas Eve. In the ensuing years, the house has been shuttered and left exactly as it stood on that terrible night. Shane and Alexa arrive to discover the aftermath of a lavish party. The revelers have fled, leaving three dead bodies, all shot with the same gun. One is acclaimed film producer Scott Berman. The others, a pair of gorgeous women in their early twenties. Scully is assigned to the case along with his new partner, Sumner Hitchens. Hitch has a reputation in the department as a self-promoter; he sold the story rights to one of his cases to a film production company – and he has the millions to show for it. Scully and Hitch begin to investigate, and the case looks to be open-and-shut: The two young women were hired prostitutes, and there’s a security video of an angry husband firing on all three. A simple case of revenge. But there’s a catch: The detectives discover a single spent bullet casing that doesn’t match the rest. From that single bullet emerges a story that spans thirty years – a tale of love, murder, suicide, and one of the biggest financial frauds in L.A. history. It’s a story fit for the screen – and Hitch is determined to get it there, no matter what it takes. But someone has gone to great lengths to cover up the crime, and as Scully and Hitch get closer to the answer, they find themselves in a killer’s crosshairs. The case could be the makings of a blockbuster Hollywood film – but only if Scully gets out of it alive.

Vigilante

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 TVLita 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.

King Con

When it comes to creating unforgettable criminal characters, nobody does it better than Emmy Award winner Stephen J. Cannell, the force behind such acclaimed TV hits as ‘The Rockford Files,’ ‘The Commish,’ ‘Wiseguy,’ and ‘The A Team.’ Now come Cannell’s most engaging characters yet a spirited assortment of clever con artists. King Con vs. The Don Raised in a world of flimflams, come ons and con jobs, Beano Bates has done so well he’s earned a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. But his lucky streak vanishes after a card game in which he scams a cool eighty grand from a notorious Mafia don who retaliates by having Beano nearly beaten to death. For the first time in his legendary career, Beano wants more than a big score he wants justice. Aided by a beautiful, no nonsense female prosecutor and a legion of crafty cousins, all accomplished grifters, Beano, the king of the cons, puts together the ultimate swindle a well planned sting of strategy, skill and deception. The target is America’s most feared mob kingpin and his psychopathic brother. And in this game, winner takes all!

Final Victim

A genius, hairless, seven foot tall psychopath, Leonard Land is many people wired into the cyber subculture of Satanism and Death Metal. He is smart and cunning. He is quick, brutal and deadly. And he is everywhere. A renegade U.S. customs agent, a brilliant and beautiful forensic phychologist and a streetwise convict master hacker are on the trail of the maniac who is methodically slaughtering innocent women a hunt that is leading a trio of unlikely heroes across an imperiled nation…
and deep into the darkest corridors of cyberspace. But there is no system the maniac cannot infiltrate, no secrets he cannot access. He knows he is being hunted…
and by whom. And he’s determined to strike first in ways too terrible to anticipate.

The Plan

The selling of the president is an assignment that could salvage TV producer Ryan Bolt’s damaged life and career, But Bolt doesn’t know whom he truly serves. And by the time he finds out, it may be already too late…
for one nation under siege.

Riding The Snake

Wheeler Cassidy, charming prankster and scion of a wealthy Beverly Hills family, has never done much with his life except play golf, drink, and seduce other men’s wives. But after his politically connected brother’s mysterious death, Wheeler embarks on a perilous journey to find himself and the Chinese gangsters who murdered the only member of his family he ever really loved. Along the way, he teams up with Tanisha Williams, a beautiful African American detective raised in South Central and now assigned to the L.A.P.D. Asian Crime Task Force. Born just fifteen minutes from each other but worlds apart, the two make a combustible pair. Together, they face the violence and corruption that stretches from Hong Kong’s most notorious criminal Triad to the highest reaches of American government. It’s an international conspiracy of huge proportions which will take Wheeler and Tanisha halfway around the world and into the most dangerous adventure of their lives…
Sweeping from the exclusive enclaves of Beverly Hills to the mean streets of South Central to the deadly labyrinth of Hong Kong’s mysterious walled city, Riding The Snake is an irresistible web of intrigue and roller coaster action, with author Stephen J. Cannell at his twisty, cinematic best. Boyd Gaines, a graduate of the Julliard School, made his Broadway debut in The Heidi Chronicles, for which he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He went on to star in She Loves Me, winning Best Actor in a Musical, and performed in many other New York theater productions including The Shawl, Spring Awakenings and The Show Off. Boyd has also appeared in many feature films and on television in such shows as One Day at a Time, L.A. Law and Frasier.

The Devil’s Workshop

Stacy Richardson is a feisty microbiology graduate student at the University of Southern California. In the middle of her final exams, she receives tragic news that her husband, who is also head of the microbiology department, has committed suicide while on sabbatical at a super secret bio weapons program in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Known by insiders as ‘The Devil’s Workshop,’ the program is run by the fierce Admiral James G. Zoll. Meanwhile, hobos Lucky Cunningham and Hollywood Mike are passing through Vanishing Lake, Texas, where, unbeknownst to them, Admiral Zoll is using the nearby prison as a testing ground for the latest bio weapons capable of targeting specific ethnic groups from the inside through the victim’s DNA. As a bio accident turns Vanishing Lake into a living hell and threatens to land the bio weapons into the hands of a band of white supremacists, The Devil’s Workshop unfolds via a uniquely entertaining narrative triumvirate: Stacy, Lucky, and Hollywood Mike’s tinseltown mogul father, Buddy Brazil. Combining classic elements of science gone awry with a cast of characters that firmly fuses America’s dust bowl past with its sensational present, The Devil’s Workshop is a thrilling race against a racially charged doomsday. Stacy Richardson is a feisty microbiology graduate student at the University of Southern California. In the middle of her final exams, she receives tragic news that her husband, who is also head of the microbiology department, has committed suicide while on sabbatical at a super secret bio weapons program in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Known by insiders as ‘The Devil’s Workshop,’ the program is run by the fierce Admiral James G. Zoll..

Runaway Heart

As an Emmy Award winning writer, Stephen Cannell has created over 40 TV series, including The A Team, The Greatest American Hero, and 21 Jump Street. He is also a New York Times Bestselling author. In Runaway Heart, Cannell combines cutting edge biotechnology and action packed suspense in a new and stunningly original thriller set on the outer fringes of medical science…
What would modern war be like if the front line foot soldiers were not our sons and daughters, but genetically engineered animals with superhuman strength and speed, and just enough intelligence to understand commands and follow them blindly?This is exactly the weapon being developed at a base in the desert by a top secret government agency. Attorney Herman Strockmire, a rumpled man with a very big but defective heart, champion of lost legal causes and the infuriating nemesis of giant corporate polluters, becomes involved when one of his employees is literally torn limb from limb by one of the experimental prototypes. At great personal risk, Herman , his beautiful daughter and law partner, Susan, and ex LAPD detective, Jack Wirta, ignore all threats and plunge headlong into harm’s way, finding themselves involved in a nightmare beyond anyone’s wildest imagination…
This science exists today. The future is now.

At First Sight

In his newest and most distinctive novel, Stephen J. Cannell channels his insider experiences into a tautly drawn noir look at the materialistic Hollywood lifestyle. Meet Chick Best a middle aged, selfabsorbed, disaffected, California dot. com millionaire. Other than his house and high priced foreign cars, Chick’s most expensive possession is his trophy wife, Evelyn. Evelyn is good at spending Chick money, money that has pretty much run out. Another problem is his drug addled sixteen year old daughter, Melissa. Though concerned about his life and family, Chick has resigned himself to a miserable state of acceptance. That is, until he, Evelyn, and Melissa take a Christmas vacation in Maui. With this, Chick s life changes Chick experiences unrequited love At First Sight when he observes Paige Ellis emerging from the hotel swimming pool. His obsession, exceeded only by his need to possess her, isn t diminished when he learns that she is happily married. Instead, he befriends Paige and her near perfect husband, Chandler. A short time later, back from Hawaii, Chick s obsession compels him to drive to Paige s house, where he runs down and kills Chandler in a drugstore parking lot. But this is just the beginning of Chick s nightmare as his life spirals homicidally out of control, resulting in the destruction of everything he holds dear. Will Paige learn the truth about Chick before it s too late?Fast paced, filled with wry humor, murder, lust, and dead on L.A. characterizations, Cannell has written his most explosively saleable novel yet.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment