ON THE GRIND

ON THE GRIND
by Stephen J. Cannell
St. Martin’s Press
January 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36628-5
ISBN-10: 0-312-36628-0
$25.95
Fiction/police

All of us enjoy reading about a character that is flawed, like us. Even though not many of us are directly members of the police, I truly enjoy reading about a character who definitely has his own values, personality and does things his own way. It’s not always the correct procedure or the way the book does it, but his type of justice works for him.

Shane Scully has managed to have himself fired from the Los Angeles police department. That’s usually what happens when two officers arrive at your door around midnight with a warrant for his arrest. He ends up with the choice of resigning and losing his pension, or being imprisoned. So his choice is to resign, which in reality is being fired. With that, also his wife, Alexa, leaves him and his son basically “disowns” him.

So within twenty-four hours, Shane has no career, no wife, and no son. Struggling to put his life back together, Shane ends up joining a small Hispanic police force in a neighboring borough. Unfortunately, the rules here are not the same as they were in L.A. Payoffs and kickbacks are the way of survival on this force. Corruption is in the place of justice.

Even though he now has a job, he begins at the low-end by being a rookie and having to team with another officer to teach how things are done here. Unfortunately, Shane doesn’t easily adjust to new situations. He doesn’t always know how to read his fellow officers or the community. When he discovers that he is not completely trusted, he does begin to hide more of his true life from the new police force. When he finds a bug placed in his belt after he was followed, he also begins to be more discrete and also discovers the bugs in his car. Now he begins to use them to his own advantage.

Stephen J. Cannell is a California native who sold his first script to Universal in 1968 for It Takes a Thief. He has also written for other shows such as Ironsides, Columbo, Adam-12, The Rockford Files, The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Wiseguy, 21 Jump Street, Silk Stalkings, and The Commish. He also has been the producer for over 1,500 episodes. In the past few years, Mr. Cannell has written 14 novels, half of which featured Shane Scully.

This is definitely a fast-read. The pace almost causes whiplash. The characters are flawed and definitely believable. This is the type of book that you could read in one setting and you feel breathless at the end with the final resolution.