Stephen Cannell's extensive experience as a television writer (he's most famous for creating and scripting The Rockford Files) is readily apparent in Riding the Snake. He's done his homework, so his movement among the worlds of the aging playboy Wheeler Cassidy, the Hong Kong Triad, and the Asian Crimes Task Force of the LAPD is natural and well executed. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Cannell's book, though, is his depiction of Tanisha Williams, a young and gifted African American detective on the LAPD. Tanisha is assigned to Asian Crimes to get her out of the way--she's refused the advances of her superior, and now she's been put under investigation. She eventually crosses paths with Cassidy who is jolted from his wastrel life of alcoholic binges and womanizing by the mysterious disappearance of his brother and the gruesome murder of his brother's secretary. Cassidy and Williams join together to investigate what appears to be a massive infiltration of the U.S. government by powerful leaders of Chinese organized crime; along the way they develop an unlikely romance. The novel blurs reality with fiction, talking about President Clinton's attempts to normalize relations with China and making connections between real campaign scandals and Cannell's fictional Chinese mobsters. While the metaphors are occasionally strained, Cannell is an old-style craftsman who knows how to tell a good story and keep his reader fully engaged until the final pages. --Patrick O'Kelley


From Publishers Weekly
"Riding the snake" refers to the immense underground Chinese immigration?a slave trade of criminals into the U.S. and the heart of this thriller. Cannell, an Emmy Award-winning writer/producer whose TV credits include The Rockford Files, Baretta and The Commish, tells fast-paced, all-plot, no-passion stories. His fourth novel (after King Con) is no exception, delivering international intrigue, a flawed hero who grows up, the gorgeous female cop who comes to love him and a sinister Hong Kong triumvirate of murderous smugglers. Drunken trust-fund jock Wheeler Cassidy is wasting his life and has lost his family's respect?especially when he's compared to his splendid brother, Prescott, a political power broker. When Prescott is murdered, Wheeler pairs up with beautiful Tanisha Williams, an African American detective in LAPD's Asian Crimes Task Force, to investigate. A second murder (the horrible "death of a thousand cuts") sets them against formidable "Willy" Wo Lap Ling, head of the notorious Hong Kong triad, and mainland eminence grise Chen Boda. Their criminal networks reach into the highest levels of the U.S. government with payoffs to politicians (their link to Prescott) and to police forces, all of which facilitate the river of heroin to U.S. gangs, with arms and even nuclear weapons thrown in for good measure. Snappy prose, a vibrant sense of place and strong local cop tales stand in for nuanced characters or ethical overtones. But then readers don't look to Cannell for those refinements. U.K. rights to Michael Joseph; French rights to Editions Flammarion; author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A rapidly deteriorating playboy, spurred into action by his brother's murder, teams up with a beautiful black L.A. cop to track down a multibillion-dollar criminal conspiracy based in Hong Kong. With an 11-city author tour.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
As Hong Kong is set to be transferred from Great Britain to China, a vicious criminal triad infiltrates the highest reaches of government. Wheeler Cassidy, the ultimate playboy, and Tanisha Williams, LAPD, are caught in a web of murder and deception that stretches to the U.S. government and the L.A.P.D. Boyd Gaines captures the fear and tension in a gravelly voice that grows fiercer as the action increases. As the listener is enfolded in the mystery, Gaines's voice disappears into the background, bringing the dramatic conclusion to the fore. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
She's a cop under a cloud; he's a country club wastrel. Together, believe it or not, they subdue a ferocious cabal of international gangsters. Not just any ferocious cabal. This is the Triad, for heaven's sake. Chinese in origin, it deals in drugs, prostitution, and general wickedness, while featuring a blend of gratuitous cruelty and untrammeled ruthlessness the Mafia can only aspire to. Wheeler Cassidy (the wastrel) discovers that his kid brother Prescott, the family's shining star, has in some way become Triad-connectedand then Triad-eliminated, when he attempts to break the connection. How to explain this? What could a rich, eminently successful young lawyer have in common with evil incarnate? To Wheeler, the LAPD appears somewhat detached in its efforts to shed light on the murkiness surrounding Prescott's deathexcept, that is, for Detective Tanisha Williams, whos interested, all right. Black, gorgeous, but distrusted by the brass for reasons more racial than rational, she sees the mysterious murder as an opportunity to get her career back on track. And Wheeler sees it as a chance to get his life back on track. Despite initial antipathy, the two hook up. The Triad trail leads them to Hong Kong, where events further diminish barriers of color and class. Bullets fly, colleagues die, and mutual dependency grows apace. Back in L.A., Wheeler and Tanisha net their super-villain only to find themselves faced with a nuclear bomb threat. Not to worry. By this time theyre thoroughly gone on each other, and love conquers all even nuclear bomb threats. Before this fourth novel (King Con, 1997, etc.), Cannell created TV's The Rockford Fileswry, fresh, understated, and character-driven. His fiction cries out for the same qualitites. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
A Beverly Hills golden boy whose glow is fading, Wheeler Cassidy, an aimless, hard-drinking womanizer, is partying toward dissipation. But after his brother's mysterious death, Wheeler embarks on a perilous journey to find himself and the Chinese gangsters who murdered the only member of his family he ever really loved. Along the way, he teams up with Tanisha Williams, a beautiful African-American detective raised in Watts and now assigned to the L.A.P.D. Asian Crimes Task Force. The two make an unlikely pair, but together they face the violence and corruption that stretches from Hong Kong's notorious criminal Triad to the highest reaches of the American government. It's an international conspiracy of huge proportions that will take Wheeler and Tanisha halfway around the world and into the most dangerous adventure of their lives...

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
September 1998

Los Angeles has always been a fertile setting for some of humanity's greatest stories of evil, from the dark novels of James Ellroy to the truly noir tales of Raymond Chandler. Now bestselling author Stephen J. Cannell ponders the seamy side of the City of Angels with his new pressure cooker, Riding the Snake. Cannell, who is known mainly as the creator-writer of a ton of television dramas, including "The A-Team," "Hunter," and "The Rockford Files," is also making a name for himself in thriller fiction with such bestsellers as King Con, The Final Victim, and The Plan already under his belt. Riding the Snake is a ten-pointer on the Richter scale that twists, turns, and slides like a wily and venomous rattler.

Even though it's definitely an L.A. book, Riding the Snake also delves into international terror. The story opens in China with Willy Wo Lap Ling, a dreaded leader of Hong Kong's notorious criminal Triad. Willy needs two new kidneys badly; without them he will surely die. In an attempt to buy a few more years, he makes a deal with the devil — he'll resume his nefarious activities in the West in exchange for the much-needed organ transplant. Willy is in charge of undermining Western society by running drugs and guns and encouraging endemic poverty through the welfare state of the U.S.; his goal just may be to bring President Clinton and the American government to its knees.

The brutality of Cannell's story hits us square in the face when we see that Willy's kidney transplant comes from anunwillingstudent dissident in Beijing. Rejuvenated after the operation, Willy leaves for the States on his own twisted sacred mission on behalf of the dark Triad.

Meanwhile, Wheeler Cassidy is having a hell of a life, soaking it up among the rich and famous of Bel Air. Handsome, in his late 30s, a bit of a swordsman (but always with someone else's wife), he has it all: charm, looks, money, and a rather unattractive alcoholic streak. The trust-fund, black-sheep baby of a megarich family, his idea of fun is a morning on the golf course and an afternoon with a bottle of his favorite booze in one hand and a country-club beauty in the other. But when his younger brother, Prescott, dies, Wheeler's world comes crashing down around him.

Prescott was the real achiever in the family and became a big-shot lawyer who did everything right, apparently. Even when he was dying, he said his proper good-byes and left one last memo for his secretary, Angie Wong, to transcribe. When Wheeler's mother bemoans the loss of her favorite son, Wheeler himself wonders why Pres, who was near-perfect, died of a heart attack while he, the bad seed, is allowed to continue living in self-indulgent limbo.

But when Wheeler heads down to the middle-class suburb of Torrance to check on Angie Wong, he finds a real horror show. Angie has been murdered in what can only be politely called the worst series of paper cuts in history. Even worse than her torturous death is something that will later be found — someone planted a message within her body.

This is where Cannell's story really takes off, for the most extraordinary and interesting cop in the history of the LAPD just happens to be working this murder case. Her name is Tanisha "Tisha" Williams, a young woman who has lifted herself out of gangland Los Angeles after watching rival gangs kill her six-year-old sister. Since that tragic day, Tisha excelled in her major (criminology) and now excels on the police force, mostly because she truly believes in upholding the law. Unfortunately, the LAPD around her is pretty racist and misogynistic, so nothing has come easy for Tisha. Still, in staking out the Asian neighborhoods as her main territory, Tisha has boned up on Chinese culture and the nuances between it and other Asian groups. Based on her understanding of Far Eastern gangs, she's fairly sure that the murder of Angie Wong is anything but random — Tisha recognizes all the markings of an execution, probably by Triad.

As Tisha and Wheeler battle their own inner demons, they must come together to solve the mystery surrounding Prescott Cassidy's death — and life. The story escalates to a nail-biting climax that explodes with suspense and terror.

Cannell has written a wild action story, using the appealing tough-guy prose he's best known for in television writing. Riding the Snake is a fast-paced, lean thriller that races to a shocking finish. Recommended!

—Douglas Clegg

Douglas Clegg is the author of numerous horror and suspense novels, including The Halloween Man and Bad Karma, written under his pseudonym, Andrew Harper. His recent Bram Stoker-nominated short story, "I am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes," can be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Volume 11.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Wheeler Cassidy, charming black sheep of a wealthy Beverly Hills family, has never done much with his life except play golf, drink, and seduce other men's wives. But after his politically connected brother's mysterious death, Wheeler embarks on a perilous journey to find himself and the Chinese gangsters who murdered the only member of his family he ever really loved. Along the way, he teams up with Tanisha Williams, a beautiful African-American detective raised in South Central L.A. and now assigned to the LAPD's Asian Crimes Task Force. Together they face the violence and corruption that stretches from Hong Kong's most notorious criminal Triad to the highest reaches of the American government.

FROM THE CRITICS

J.D. Reed

With its crackling cast of power brokers. . .cops and. . .gangsters, Snake slithers along to an explosive climax. . . —People

Publishers Weekly

"Riding the snake" refers to the immense underground Chinese immigration--a slave trade of criminals into the U.S. and the heart of this thriller. Cannell, an Emmy Award-winning writer/producer whose TV credits include The Rockford Files, Baretta and The Commish, tells fast-paced, all-plot, no-passion stories. His fourth novel (after King Con) is no exception, delivering international intrigue, a flawed hero who grows up, the gorgeous female cop who comes to love him and a sinister Hong Kong triumvirate of murderous smugglers. Drunken trust-fund jock Wheeler Cassidy is wasting his life and has lost his family's respect--especially when he's compared to his splendid brother, Prescott, a political power broker. When Prescott is murdered, Wheeler pairs up with beautiful Tanisha Williams, an African American detective in LAPD's Asian Crimes Task Force, to investigate. A second murder (the horrible "death of a thousand cuts") sets them against formidable "Willy" Wo Lap Ling, head of the notorious Hong Kong triad, and mainland eminence grise Chen Boda. Their criminal networks reach into the highest levels of the U.S. government with payoffs to politicians (their link to Prescott) and to police forces, all of which facilitate the river of heroin to U.S. gangs, with arms and even nuclear weapons thrown in for good measure. Snappy prose, a vibrant sense of place and strong local cop tales stand in for nuanced characters or ethical overtones. But then readers don't look to Cannell for those refinements. U.K. rights to Michael Joseph; French rights to Editions Flammarion; author tour. (Oct.)

Library Journal

A rapidly deteriorating playboy, spurred into action by his brother's murder, teams up with a beautiful black L.A. cop to track down a multibillion-dollar criminal conspiracy based in Hong Kong.

J.D. Reed

With its crackling cast of power brokers. . .cops and. . .gangsters, Snake slithers along to an explosive climax. . . --People

Kirkus Reviews

She's a cop under a cloud; he's a country club wastrel. Together, believe it or not, they subdue a ferocious cabal of international gangsters. Not just any ferocious cabal. This is the Triad, for heaven's sake. Chinese in origin, it deals in drugs, prostitution, and general wickedness, while featuring a blend of gratuitous cruelty and untrammeled ruthlessness the Mafia can only aspire to. Wheeler Cassidy (the wastrel) discovers that his kid brother Prescott, the family's shining star, has in some way become Triad-connected—and then Triad-eliminated, when he attempts to break the connection. How to explain this? What could a rich, eminently successful young lawyer have in common with evil incarnate? To Wheeler, the LAPD appears somewhat detached in its efforts to shed light on the murkiness surrounding Prescott's death—except, that is, for Detective Tanisha Williams, who's interested, all right. Black, gorgeous, but distrusted by the brass for reasons more racial than rational, she sees the mysterious murder as an opportunity to get her career back on track. And Wheeler sees it as a chance to get his life back on track. Despite initial antipathy, the two hook up. The Triad trail leads them to Hong Kong, where events further diminish barriers of color and class. Bullets fly, colleagues die, and mutual dependency grows apace. Back in L.A., Wheeler and Tanisha net their super-villain only to find themselves faced with a nuclear bomb threat. Not to worry. By this time they're thoroughly gone on each other, and love conquers all even nuclear bomb threats. Before this fourth novel (King Con), Cannell created TV's 'The Rockford Files'; wry, fresh, understated, andcharacter-driven. His fiction cries out for the same qualitites.