The Viking Funeral

Stephen J. Cannell has taken to heart Raymond Chandler's remark about writing crime fiction. "When in doubt," Chandler advised, "have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." There are so many bullets flying in The Viking Funeral that readers might be forgiven for missing this author's subtler efforts to fill out the dimensions of his series protagonist, LAPD Detective Shane Scully, introduced in 2001's The Tin Collectors.

Nobody believes Scully when he says he's just seen Jody Dean (his boyhood buddy and former colleague, who supposedly committed suicide two years before) speeding down a freeway. So the detective sets out to prove that Dean is alive, only to fall in with a crew of undercover cops who've slipped their leash and are now running a convoluted money-laundering scheme that ties U.S. tobacco shipments to South American drug barons.

Cannell, the creator of TV series such as The Rockford Filesand Wiseguy, certainly knows how to choreograph an action scene. But his dialogue is occasionally stilted, and The Viking Funeralloses some narrative steam during a lengthy tour of tropical hideouts. The story is at its best in illuminating the deceptive friendship between the emotionally scarred Scully and the arrogant Dean. Fans of The Tin Collectorsshouldn't be disappointed. --J. Kingston Pierce