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Hollywood Tough (Shane Scully Novels)
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Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Author: Stephen J. Cannell
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Our Price: $7.99
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Author: Stephen J. Cannell
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Average Customer Rating:
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Hollywood Tough (Shane Scully Novels) Description
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312989422
ISBN: 0312989423
Label: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2004-01-05
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Product Release Date: 2003-12-30
Studio: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312989422
ISBN: 0312989423
Label: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2004-01-05
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Product Release Date: 2003-12-30
Studio: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Editorial Review of Hollywood Tough (Shane Scully Novels)
Detective Shane Scully is back in the good graces of the department, hailed as a hero after bringing down a deadly gang of rogue cops in The Viking Funeral. At a glamorous Hollywood party with his new wife, Alexa, Shane overhears a famous producer make a suspicious remark about the strange deaths of his two ex-wives. Is he serious or merely joking around with his coterie of hangers-on? This becomes more than just police business, because the party is to celebrate the engagement of the producer to Alexa's closest friend.Against his wife's wishes, Shane begins to look into this heavy-hitter's past. At the same time, he becomes aware of a high-profile wiseguy's attempt to control Hollywood's unions. He initiates an elaborate and expensive sting operation, actually setting up a phony production company to produce a bogus movie at LAPD expense. The plan is to draw the starstruck wiseguy into revealing his real purpose for coming to L.A. But before long the overbudgeted movie is rocketing into production. Tough, streetwise Scully, who thought he'd seen just about everything, is astounded by the distorted egos and total insanity of the movie business, and while he struggles to keep his sting operation from spinning wildly out of control, he and Alexa find themselves and Shane's teenaged son, Chooch, involved in something much bigger than they had ever imagined, something that puts all their lives on the line.
Customer Reviews of Hollywood Tough (Shane Scully Novels)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Good Cop Novel
Review: If you like a good cop fiction novel than this one will make a good read. I started the Shane Scully series with the tin collectors and have continued to read them. This novel is packed with suspense. The novel will start out with a simple case for Shane Scully to handle but it quickly turns into more for him. Action packed and a bit of suspense.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a dramatically interesting but a bita far-fetched novel
Review: mr cannell indeed is full of lotsa cool ideas on how novels could be interesting and fun to read. the dialogues in his books are all sharp and streetwise, the police procedures also read pretty real. the plot sometimes stretched out too far and wide but never lost focus. there are two mistakes found in this 'hollywood tough':
mistake one on page 117:
if a chinese restaurant named as 'peking duck', it usually hints it's a chinese restaurant serving northern chinese cuisine instead of the south-easter cantonese stuff such as dim sum. peking duck is a specialty of the northern china, orginated in peking. also, dim sum usually never served after 3:00pm. we usually couldn't get it, and if we try to get dim sum from a restaurant named 'peking duck', we definitely are morons.
mistake two on page 221:
the dialogue between scully and valentine was totally mixed up, names were obviously misplaced.
i've read this novel in 2003 and 2006. problem is that when i read it the second time, it only looked familiar. maybe that's the problem of all the modern day bestsellers.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Tough to Read Hollywood Tough
Review: Among my favorite books is King Con! I have bought many copies to give as gifts to friends. I buy Stephen Cannell always hoping to find another King Con.
The best character in this book is a marmalade cat named Franco. The plot goes off in many different directions! It never really hangs together. The shoot-out at the end is ridiculous. People who are supposed to be competent and intelligent make idiotic decisions. Scully's wife (groomed to be head of Dectives at LAPD) is so sweet and kind and thoughtful (and dumb)! Would LAPD groom such a woman to be head of detectives? Well, maybe in real life - but it just doesn't work in this story. Too many characters; too many subplots; racial stuff, gangs, Hollywood, the Mafia, family issues, movie making. I thought Cannell must have had a deadline for producing a book and looked through his file of old ideas and threw a bunch together and did his best to contrive a plot to connect disparate ideas. This book doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything. It's a dud. Don't bother.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Shane Scully cracks the crust of Hollywood
Review: Yes, it's true. Shane and Alexa are back in action, now married and living in Shane's small house in Venice CA with Shane's son Chooch. Alexa's long time friend Nora Bishop is getting married, and after a series of bad boyfriends she has finally landed Farrell Champion, big name movie producer.
When Alexa and Shane attend a party splattered with big name stars at Farrell's house, Shane runs into a no-name street grifter from the streets named Nicky Marcella. Nicky claims to be running a legitimate movie production company named Cine-Roma, and also claims to be partnered with Champion. He asks Shane for a favor in return for all the informing he had done in the past for LAPD, namely, find a girl named Carol White that Nicky wanted to star in his next movie.
Alexa is called away from the party for a big-time gang shooting, and as Shane is leaving separately, he overhears Farrell mentioning something about poisoning his two previous wives. Shane proceeds to find Carol, a used up junkie selling her body for fixes, and also discovers a strange plot to overtake the IATSE union by a mobster named Dennis Valentine from back east. When Carol is found brutally murdered, her death touches Shane deep inside, bring him face to face with the demons that keep him on the police force.
Shane realizes that somehow, Nicky, Dennis, Farrell, and the gang shootings are related, and vows to avenge Carol's useless death by discovering the truth behind the bizarre mob connections in the glamorous world of show business.
While Cannell's `The Viking Funeral' took a turn into the darker side of existence, `Hollywood Tough' makes up for it by skirting along an almost comedic edge of the seedier side of the movie industry. There's a script that makes no sense to be purchased from a Scientology-type religious fanatic, the movie star Michael Fallon who has so many phobias he has to track them on paper, a producer named Paul Lubick who's ego is only outsized by the massive redwood trees he imports for a ceiling shot, and Nicky Marcella's buzz-word wanna-be actions.
This time Shane may have bitten off more than he can chew, and as he slides into his own undercover world of glamour and glitz, he realizes the seductress's pull of the lifestyle and how close he finds himself submitting to its temptations. Also introduced in `Hollywood Tough' is Chooch's girlfriend Delfina, who to me turned out to be disappointingly shallow in comparison to the other brightly painted characters from the story.
Cannell again uses words to graphically sketch a rolling video in my head, the plot folding and twisting around one of my favorite book-cops of all. A fast and energetic read, don't miss out on the Shane Scully books, The Tin Collectors, The Viking Funeral, and now Hollywood Tough. Enjoy!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Fun, silly, and engaging
Review: Cannell manages in his Shane Scully novels to combine interesting and almost plausible plots with three-dimensional characters who talk and behave like real people. The dialogue is often brilliant, with terrific one liners and sarcasm to keep the reader's interest. My favorite characters with Cannell are the antagonists, in this case the contradictory Dennis Valentine and the squirmy, hilarious Nicky Marcela. The plot is entertaining enough, but I love the book for the interactions between the characters. Yes, everyone is uniformly handsome/gorgeous. Yes, there are shallow LA stereotypes on every page. The two main complaints I had were with the extraneous gang plot and the incredibly annoying character of Chooch, Shane's obnoxious and stupid son. I think Cannell writes the kind of books Stuart Woods attempts (but SW seems to lack the creativity and lively dialogue to be mentioned in the same breath).
Review Summary: A Good Cop Novel
Review: If you like a good cop fiction novel than this one will make a good read. I started the Shane Scully series with the tin collectors and have continued to read them. This novel is packed with suspense. The novel will start out with a simple case for Shane Scully to handle but it quickly turns into more for him. Action packed and a bit of suspense.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a dramatically interesting but a bita far-fetched novel
Review: mr cannell indeed is full of lotsa cool ideas on how novels could be interesting and fun to read. the dialogues in his books are all sharp and streetwise, the police procedures also read pretty real. the plot sometimes stretched out too far and wide but never lost focus. there are two mistakes found in this 'hollywood tough':
mistake one on page 117:
if a chinese restaurant named as 'peking duck', it usually hints it's a chinese restaurant serving northern chinese cuisine instead of the south-easter cantonese stuff such as dim sum. peking duck is a specialty of the northern china, orginated in peking. also, dim sum usually never served after 3:00pm. we usually couldn't get it, and if we try to get dim sum from a restaurant named 'peking duck', we definitely are morons.
mistake two on page 221:
the dialogue between scully and valentine was totally mixed up, names were obviously misplaced.
i've read this novel in 2003 and 2006. problem is that when i read it the second time, it only looked familiar. maybe that's the problem of all the modern day bestsellers.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Tough to Read Hollywood Tough
Review: Among my favorite books is King Con! I have bought many copies to give as gifts to friends. I buy Stephen Cannell always hoping to find another King Con.
The best character in this book is a marmalade cat named Franco. The plot goes off in many different directions! It never really hangs together. The shoot-out at the end is ridiculous. People who are supposed to be competent and intelligent make idiotic decisions. Scully's wife (groomed to be head of Dectives at LAPD) is so sweet and kind and thoughtful (and dumb)! Would LAPD groom such a woman to be head of detectives? Well, maybe in real life - but it just doesn't work in this story. Too many characters; too many subplots; racial stuff, gangs, Hollywood, the Mafia, family issues, movie making. I thought Cannell must have had a deadline for producing a book and looked through his file of old ideas and threw a bunch together and did his best to contrive a plot to connect disparate ideas. This book doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything. It's a dud. Don't bother.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Shane Scully cracks the crust of Hollywood
Review: Yes, it's true. Shane and Alexa are back in action, now married and living in Shane's small house in Venice CA with Shane's son Chooch. Alexa's long time friend Nora Bishop is getting married, and after a series of bad boyfriends she has finally landed Farrell Champion, big name movie producer.
When Alexa and Shane attend a party splattered with big name stars at Farrell's house, Shane runs into a no-name street grifter from the streets named Nicky Marcella. Nicky claims to be running a legitimate movie production company named Cine-Roma, and also claims to be partnered with Champion. He asks Shane for a favor in return for all the informing he had done in the past for LAPD, namely, find a girl named Carol White that Nicky wanted to star in his next movie.
Alexa is called away from the party for a big-time gang shooting, and as Shane is leaving separately, he overhears Farrell mentioning something about poisoning his two previous wives. Shane proceeds to find Carol, a used up junkie selling her body for fixes, and also discovers a strange plot to overtake the IATSE union by a mobster named Dennis Valentine from back east. When Carol is found brutally murdered, her death touches Shane deep inside, bring him face to face with the demons that keep him on the police force.
Shane realizes that somehow, Nicky, Dennis, Farrell, and the gang shootings are related, and vows to avenge Carol's useless death by discovering the truth behind the bizarre mob connections in the glamorous world of show business.
While Cannell's `The Viking Funeral' took a turn into the darker side of existence, `Hollywood Tough' makes up for it by skirting along an almost comedic edge of the seedier side of the movie industry. There's a script that makes no sense to be purchased from a Scientology-type religious fanatic, the movie star Michael Fallon who has so many phobias he has to track them on paper, a producer named Paul Lubick who's ego is only outsized by the massive redwood trees he imports for a ceiling shot, and Nicky Marcella's buzz-word wanna-be actions.
This time Shane may have bitten off more than he can chew, and as he slides into his own undercover world of glamour and glitz, he realizes the seductress's pull of the lifestyle and how close he finds himself submitting to its temptations. Also introduced in `Hollywood Tough' is Chooch's girlfriend Delfina, who to me turned out to be disappointingly shallow in comparison to the other brightly painted characters from the story.
Cannell again uses words to graphically sketch a rolling video in my head, the plot folding and twisting around one of my favorite book-cops of all. A fast and energetic read, don't miss out on the Shane Scully books, The Tin Collectors, The Viking Funeral, and now Hollywood Tough. Enjoy!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Fun, silly, and engaging
Review: Cannell manages in his Shane Scully novels to combine interesting and almost plausible plots with three-dimensional characters who talk and behave like real people. The dialogue is often brilliant, with terrific one liners and sarcasm to keep the reader's interest. My favorite characters with Cannell are the antagonists, in this case the contradictory Dennis Valentine and the squirmy, hilarious Nicky Marcela. The plot is entertaining enough, but I love the book for the interactions between the characters. Yes, everyone is uniformly handsome/gorgeous. Yes, there are shallow LA stereotypes on every page. The two main complaints I had were with the extraneous gang plot and the incredibly annoying character of Chooch, Shane's obnoxious and stupid son. I think Cannell writes the kind of books Stuart Woods attempts (but SW seems to lack the creativity and lively dialogue to be mentioned in the same breath).