An Emmy Award-winning writer and producer of some of television's best-known pop cop dramas, including The Rockford Files, The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, The Commish, and Wiseguy, Stephen J. Cannell has spent more than 35 years of writing for the big and small screens.
However, in one of crime fiction's most successful second acts, Cannell's career as a bestselling novelist began over two decades after he left his prints on the television world.
His debut novel, a political thriller called The Plan, burst onto the crime fiction beat in 1995. Said the New York Times Book Review of his first literary outing: "The thrust of the novel is unassailable." Cannell's follow-up, Final Victim, was a serial killer tale in the popular Silence of the Lambs vein. "Relentless.... Mesmerizing... Stephen J. Cannell is a great entertainer. The man can write," said The Washington Post Book World of Cannell's sophomore smash. Feature film rights to his third outing, a rollicking mob tale entitled King Con, were sold to MGM for $1 million, with Cannell writing the screenplay for the film and John Travolta slated to star.
Two other stand-alone thrillers, Riding the Snake (1998) and The Devil's Workshop (1999), were also well received, both critically and commercially. But Cannell would truly hit paydirt with the introduction of Shane Scully, a renegade LAPD sergeant who would come to star in a string of bestsellers beginning with 2001's The Tin Collectors. Named for those Internal Affairs officers who "police the police" -- and take the badges of cops who don't play by the rules -- the new turn displayed Cannell's "knack for character and a bent for drama that will satisfy even the most jaded thrill lover," according to Publishers Weekly.
Cannell's most recent books -- The Viking Funeral (2001) and Hollywood Tough (2002) -- continue to find Scully getting into all manner of dicey situations. but Cannell will always be there to bail him out for another adventure.
