In his new outing, L.A. homicide detective Shane Scully has too many things to deal with. There s the latest in a string of serial murders, although Shane has serious doubts that this victim fits the pattern. There s his captain, who keeps pressing him to get the murder solved before the chief of detectives forms a task force. There s his wife, the aforementioned chief of detectives. There s his partner, an old friend who is in serious danger of letting booze take away his badge. And there s the surprising link between Shane s current murder victim and a decade-old unsolved murder of an L.A. cop. Despite having several novels under his belt, Cannell may still be better known as a television producer (The A-Team, The Commish, The Rockford Files), but that will soon change. In Scully, he has created one of the genre s most interestingly conflicted characters, a veteran cop who s seen it all and who (like Michael Connelly s Harry Bosch) is getting just a little tired of all the crap. Cannell s writing keeps improving, too; fans of the Scully series will note both an added depth and a new stylistic panache in this installment. With every book, Cannell moves closer to joining crime fiction s A-Team. David Pitt