The Tin Collectors: A Novel (Shane Scully Novels)

Stephen J. Cannell has written and produced enough TV cop shows to give him plenty of inside know-how about the LAPD, and recent events in OJ-land make the plot of The Tin Collectors--conspiracy, corruption, and murder by the boys in blue--more than credible. The tin collectors are the internal affairs cops, and they're out to make police sergeant Shane Scully the fall guy after he kills his former partner, Ray Molnar, in the midst of a domestic dispute that was just a click away from ending in the murder of Ray's wife. Not so coincidentally, she was once Shane's lover, a fact the tin collectors seize upon as evidence that Scully wanted the highly regarded Molar dead. As the wrongfully accused but redoubtable cop fights to clear his name, he discovers Ray's secret life: his other wife, his luxurious Lake Arrowhead home, and the ladder of corruption that reaches all the way to the top in the City of Angels. It should come as no surprise that this has TV-treatment written all over it. Read it now before it comes to a small screen near you, as it surely will. And applaud Cannell's growing ability to flesh out his characters with enough subtext and complexity to make a prime-time series starring Shane a strong possibility. --Jane Adams