Summary
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 having failed 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 the Sheriff's Special Enforcement Bureau. At the request of the Mayor, LAPD, as an uninvolved and unbiased agency, assigns Shane Scully 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. Shane pursues his investigation in a direction that neither his chief nor his wife agrees with, and succeeds in putting himself, his loved ones, and his career in terrible jeopardy before he finally discovers the shocking and deadly truth.
Stephen J. Cannell was born in Los Angeles, California on February 5, 1941. He was dyslexic and struggled through school. After graduating from the University of Oregon, he drove a truck for his father's home-decorating business and wrote TV scripts at night and on the weekends. His first writing successes were story ideas sold to Mission Impossible. Four years later, he sold a script for It Takes a Thief. In 1966 a script he submitted for Adam 12 so impressed the producers at Universal that they offered him the position of head writer. At Universal he wrote and helped create several TV shows including The Rockford Files, Baretta, and Baa Baa Black Sheep.
He started his own production company in 1979, generating The A-Team, Riptide, Hunter, and 21 Jump Street. Other credits include Wiseguy, Renegade, and Silk Stalkings. He has scripted over 1,500 TV episodes and created or co-created over 40 programs.
His first novel, The Plan, was published in 1995. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 15 novels including Final Victim, King Con, and the Shane Scully series. He died of complications associated with melanoma on September 30, 2010 at the age of 69.
(Bowker Author Biography)
