About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

VIKING FUNERAL, THE
by Stephen J. Cannell
St. Martin's Press, January 2002
382 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312269609


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Stephen Cannell did not do well at school. Unbeknownst to everyone at the time and, indeed, until his own daughter was diagnosed with the same disability. Cannell suffers from dyslexia. He always wanted to be a writer despite his extremely low grades and it is a real tribute to his courage and persistence that he is now a very popular author. He did not commence writing fiction in book form until nearly twenty years after beginning his writing career for television. The author's television successes include The Rockford Files, Baretta, and Baa Baa Black Sheep to name just a few of the many hits he has created. A multi-talented man, Cannell not only writes books and even scripts for movies, he is an astute businessman and has also become a successful actor

Cannell's first novel was The Plan, published in 1995. Following that, he produced, in rapid succession, Final Victim, King Con, Riding the Snake and The Devil's Workshop. The next novel was The Tin Collectors, to which The Viking Funeral is a sequel, featuring Cannell's hapless hero Sergeant Shane Scully of the LAPD. It is very

interesting to note that Stephen Cannell is a perfectionist in that he rewrites his output constantly in order to produce the tightest action and mots justes for an elegant whole.

The Viking Funeral opens just before Scully's inamorata, Alexa Hamilton, is about to receive the Medal of Valour, together with promotion to lieutenant, for an operation which also involved Scully. He however, instead of receiving joint honours, was forced to undergo psychiatric treatment. His mental health is further in question by both Alexa and the authorities when Scully claims to have seen his old friend Jody Dean. Jody had committed suicide some

years previously. Shane is contacted by Jody, however, and is told that his friend is one of a group of undercover police investigating the 'parallel market', the device whereby money obtained from the drug trade is laundered.

Scully manages to convince Alexa and the new police chief that there is a group of police, known as the Vikings, who have all been reported dead but who have become corrupt while pursung their top secret undercover work. Shane is himself given a covert mission to penetrate the band. He has to rely on his friendship with Jody, whom he had always idealised unrealistically and, it turns out, unjustifiedly, to keep him safe amidst the gang of inimical and savage drug using former policemen in order to survive their hatred.

Despite Cannell's constant rewriting, at least one inconsistency escaped his attention - when Shane interviews Jody's wife, he is convinced that she is unaware that her husband's death was faked. This was confirmed by Jody, yet later in the book Scully mentions that Jody's wife was aware her husband lived. That is a minor criticism in the face of the plot construction. The author has gone to a lot of trouble to research the parallel market which does, in fact , exist. He has manufactured a very plausible plot concerning just how the predators could be preyed upon by a ruthless band of criminal former law enforcers. And more power to him for that.

On the debit side of the writing, I had difficulty with the author's use of what is apparently the Los Angeles dialect combined with a kind of thieves' cant. At times the combination was almost incomprehensible.No doubt, too, Cannell would have been restricted in his television shows from showing too much that is bloodthirsty, but those same restrictions do not, unfortunately, inhibit him in his fiction writing. Some of the torture and murder scenes in this book are amongst the worst of the blood spatter through which I have gingerly tip-toed in the large volume of suspense fiction which I customarily read. Another quibble I have is with an event toward the end of the book. Scully was an orphan, a foundling who has always wondered about his parentage and just why his mother abandoned him. That question is resolved in a way that I considered equivalent to the camel being swalowed despite the devourer straining to ingest a gnat. Likewise, I had problems accepting the telepathic bond that exists between Scully and Jody, a faculty which can be turned on and off at very convenient times.While it is unlikely that Cannell's output will ever be regarded as belles-lettres, there is little doubt that this novel will be received enthusiastically by those aficionados of the genre who are not averse to gobbets of flesh and buckets of blood.

Editoržs note: This is a review of the Australian version published by Allen & Unwin , released Feb 8, 2002.

Reviewed by Denise Wels, February 2002

This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]