9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Perils of Pauline Has Nothing on Shane Scully, September 29, 2006
Cannell is an interesting writer and his novels are always worth reading.
Shane Scully is an LAPD detective. His wife is in the LAPD also in a supervisory position. His tight little comfortable world is about to become very unraveled when his wife fails to be where she said she would and her automobile is found with an LAPD cop in it, killed execution style with her handcuffs on him. She is missing and later calls him to indicate she is sorry for what she has done and that there is only one way out...a BANG follows the message.
He figures out where she is and she is transported to a hospital, her life hannging by a thread.
Scully then proceeds to break most laws in the book with respect to investigating the situation and is eventually himself arrested.
How this scenario is set up is eventually and slowly revealed and I won't share any secrets except to say that you know this writer is not going to have one of his stars heading to prison for life. How that is avoided is a tight, frothy read.
A new character is revealed in this book....name of John Bodine...you won't forget him.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I like Shane Scully, but this is a lousy novel, February 16, 2007
Part One: The part you can read if you haven't read the novel
White Sister is the third Shane Scully novel I've read and it is easily the worst (I enjoyed Cold Hit and Vertical Coffin). I was surprised to find that I'm the only reader so far to trash the novel. (I guess I'll be getting a lot of negative responses to my review)
I'm a fan of Shane Scully and I like Cannell's writing (which is why the novel warrants two stars rather than one) but the bottom line is - this is a pretty lousy novel. My biggest complaint is that the novel's premise makes no sense. Scully operates so far outside the law that it's as if Cannell were writing a script for the next James Cameron or Michael Bay summer blockbuster. Shane's wife gets shot and spends most of the novel in a coma and even though we have a pretty good idea how things are going to work out, we have to suffer though pages of contrived melodrama. Add to this a collection of cartoonish rap music characters and a silly shoot out in the Nevada desert and you have a novel to avoid.
Part Two: ***Don't read the rest of this review unless you've read the novel or you don't care if I ruin the plot for you (although Cannell ruined it long before I got involved)***
First off, let me say that I don't mind if a novel is a little unrealistic. I don't care if the hero has a gun that never runs out of bullets or the killer doesn't die no matter how many times he is shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned. What really irks me is when characters in a novel behave in ways that don't make any sense and is clearly an artificial construct of the author to support a plot that can't possibly stand on its own.
1. The emails between Alexa and Dark Angel are pivotal to the plot, but they are ridiculous. If they are worried about someone reading the email messages, why not just call from a pay phone? It would be safer and allow for a better exchange of information. There was no reason to think the Malugas were bugging phones or screening emails (or even had the skill to do such a thing). Even then, the code wouldn't have done much good. Shane didn't understand the code initially because he wasn't familiar with the names of the rap music acts and rap slang, but if the Malugas had read the emails they would have understood them immediately. So why bother?
The answer: Cannell needs Shane to find the emails and then doubt his wife. It allows everyone to think that Dark Angel is a bad cop and that his murder is linked to an affair with Alexa. This means that Shane is the only person who can clear Alexa's good name.
2. The Chief of Police knows that Dark Angel is a good cop working under cover and that the affair with Alexa is a fabrication, but he holds his tongue. Why? Because he can't compromise another under cover cop in the Maluga organization. BUT this makes no sense. If the Malugas killed Dark Angel because they knew he was an undercover cop reporting to Alexa how could it hurt to reveal this information in the press? It wouldn't be news to the Malugas. They already knew Dark Angel was a cop. The other undercover cop may be in danger (since Dark Angel brought him in to the Maluga operation) but he was in danger the moment the Maluga's found out who Dark Angel was.
The answer: Cannell needs everyone in the Department to be against Shane so he can do his rogue cop thing. If the Department admitted that Dark Angel was undercover it would defuse the racial angle, remove the suspicion from Alexa and allow the investigating cops to turn their attention to the Malugas. If this happened, Shane could go to the hospital and be with his wife, staying out of trouble. Not much of a novel there.
These are my two biggest beefs but trust me the list is endless. My advice: Don't read it. The other two Scully novels I've read are much better. White Sister is a contrived mess.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Melodrama and clichés ad nauseum ad infinitum, April 5, 2007
While I have always thought that Stephen Cannell's "Shane Scully" novels were easily beyond plausibility, I have always enjoyed them just the same. White Sister, however, was a chore to get through. I often found myself skipping to the next paragraph or two each time he gets his "soliloquy" on. With astounding frequency, the main character begins to wax poetic about ______ (you fill in the blank) to the point that you expect him to break into a West-Side-Story-esque song and dance.
The "I know I lied to you five times and broke my promises to you three times in the past 10 minutes, but trust me this time." bit got quite old.
There were a lot of little worn out constructs and clichés used repeatedly, time after time, over and over again, and repetitively throughout the book.
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