Tale reflects real issues of power
Stephen J.Cannell’s latest Shane Scully police procedural arrives just in time for the debate in Congress over extending the USA Patriot Act. That antiterrorism legislation, quickly passed in response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, expanded law enforcement powers in ways that rise up and bite the fictional Los Angeles cops hunting a serial killer in “Cold Hit.” They find themselves being bugged, threatened and detained by R.A. Virtue, chief of California Homeland Security, when their investigation trespasses on his turf.
The killer they seek preys on middle-aged homeless men, cutting off their fingertips to hinder identification and carving a mysterious symbol into their chests. At first, Det. Scully gets nowhere with the case, in part because his sidekick, Zack Farrell, has become an unreliable drunk. Pressure for results forces Scully’s wife, Alexa, who is also his superior in the L.A. Police Department, to agree to the formation of a multi-agency task force headed by an arrogant FBI profiler who immediately rubs Scully the wrong way.
A break in the case only adds to its complexity. The latest victim seems too healthy to have been homeless. A bullet extracted from his skull provides police technicians with a “cold hit” -- a ballistics match with a previous murder linked to the Russian mafia. When the LAPD stages a funeral for him and checks out the mourners, most of them turn out to be representatives from Russian, French, Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies -- spies who don’t appreciate being spied on by Scully.
Elite officers from the LAPD’s counter-terrorism bureau advise Scully that this killing involves national security concerns and has nothing to do with the others and that he should let them handle it. But their two-case theory has a hole. The latest victim also has the symbol carved in his chest, but only Scully and Farrell know about that detail linking the bodies, unless Farrell, in an alcoholic daze, leaked it.
There’s an even worse possibility, which Scully tries not to consider, because during his own hard-drinking bachelor years Farrell covered for him so he wouldn’t lose his job. Could Farrell himself be the killer? Some of the evidence points that way.
Cannell is a skilled plotter and a creator of juicy minor characters. “Cold Hit” is sardonically amusing at portraying the bureaucratic infighting that can cripple investigations and the tendency of task force members, angling for book or movie deals, to withhold information from their colleagues. As the case spirals outward from local crime to international espionage dating back to the 1980s, the action rarely lets up.
When it does, we’re reintroduced to the back story that is one of the pleasures of reading the Scully series -- the hero’s ongoing struggle to transform himself from a macho tough into a decent family man. In “Cold Hit,” Scully’s son, Chooch, is being recruited to play college football -- USC Coach Pete Carroll puts in a cameo appearance -- and Scully takes time out from dodging Russian goons and Virtue’s heavies to give the boy some really good advice.
Virtue, who has presidential ambitions and dirty secrets, doesn’t have Scully tortured, but he does lock the detective up and force him to listen endlessly to Barry Manilow tunes on Muzak. In the end, as in every Scully novel, the civilized existence he hopes to lead with Alexa and Chooch comes to seem like a mirage. Nuances of character are tossed aside, good guys and bad guys alike open up with heavy-caliber ordnance and things go boom.
What about the Patriot Act? Cannell, who says he asked legal scholars to explain its provisions, builds an alarming case against it, but then, perhaps in recognition of the fact that not all cop-novel fans are civil libertarians, he equivocates a little. Alexa, of all people, insists, “We need all the powers we can get to put dirtbags away.”
Still, Scully continues to worry: “[A]re we little by little, losing what this country once stood for?”
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Michael Harris, author of the novel “The Chieu Hoi Saloon,” is a regular contributor to Book Review.