From Publishers Weekly
The title of the latest entry in Cannell's Shane Scully LAPD series (Hollywood Tough; The Tin Collectors; The Viking Funeral) is police jargon for any doorway, which is where cops are most vulnerable when clearing a house. As the novel begins, Shane stumbles into a full-scale barricade shootout between gunman Vincent Smiley and surrounding police. After one of two competing SWAT teams at the scene burns down the barricaded house with Smiley in it, a fight over who is to blame begins to smolder. Several subsequent cop shootings (with all victims caught in the aforementioned vertical coffins) fan the SWAT team turf tussle into a conflagration that Shane and wife Alexa, the acting head of the LAPD Detective Services Group, are assigned to investigate. Shane, an old school detective, insists on starting from zero and looking into shooter Smiley's past. Everyone else wants him to forget the gumshoe routine and come up with an instant solution. The pleasure of Cannell's work isn't in the writing ("Bullets whined and ricocheted in a deadly concert of tortured metal"), but lies more often in the interesting procedural elements ("It's very hard to protect a crime scene, so I always start at the far edges first, and work in toward the body"). Shane's still a little rough around the edges, but despite too many pop psychology musings, he's a dependable and satisfying character. Readers will enjoy watching him puzzle out the twists and turns of the plot and watch breathlessly as he undertakes a climactic high-speed chase in a souped-up dune buggy on a military shooting range. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From AudioFile
With VERTICAL COFFIN, Stephen J. Cannell has added another winner to his list of award-winning novels and television shows. This title is Cannell's latest thriller featuring LAPD detective Shane Scully, whose acumen is put to the test when he investigates why LA sheriffs and ATF agents appear to be shooting each other. Scott Brick's reading is the latest in a string of superb performances. Brick's ability to inject irony and wit into the novel adds to his performance, particularly because his sense of timing is impeccable. The only drawback is that there's quite a bit missing from this abridgment. A shame. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
The firefight played out like a mini-Waco conflagration. Vincent Smiley, a wanna-be cop with a fondness for bragging about his weapons cache, battles elements of the Los Angeles Police and County Sheriff's Departments until a SWAT team brings in the heavy weaponry, and Smiley's home burns to the ground with Smiley apparently in it, firing until the end. The incident takes on political repercussions when it's learned that the battle erupted as Smiley was served with a misdemeanor weapons warrant by an LAPD patrolman. An intradepartmental squabble ensues when the LAPD learns a division of the Feds was aware of Smiley's violent proclivities and may have sacrificed one of their patrol officers to serve a warrant and force Smiley's hand. Shane Scully, an LAPD homicide investigator and his wife, Alexa, an LAPD Division commander, are handed the political hot potato of sorting out the who-knew-what-when mess. Rapid deterioration sets in when two officers involved in the case are shot dead by a sniper. Are law-enforcement agencies at war? Cannell, a veteran TV producer of such hits as The Rockford Files, has made the transition to crime fiction easily; this is his fourth Scully novel along with several stand-alone thrillers. The Scully series, though, brings out the best in him: adept characterization, sharp dialogue, breakneck plotting, and great entertainment value. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“Scully has ample opportunity to prove how ‘Hollywood tough’ he is...veteran writer/TV producer Cannell has concocted his special brand of reader candy.”—Kirkus Reviews

FROM THE PUBLISHER

SWAT teams refer to doorways as "vertical coffins" because they are most vulnerable when passing through them. The new Shane Scully novels starts with a bang as an L.A. sheriff's deputy is gunned down on the front porch of a house while serving a routine warrant.

The arrest is given to the Sheriff's Department by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, who neglects to mention the man is suspected of hording an arsenal of illegal weapons. The shooter barricades himself in his house as multiagency SWAT teams eventually burn it to the ground with the suspect still inside.

Two elite SWAT units from the L.A. Sheriff's Department and the ATF appear to be engaged in a deadly midnight war. Officers from both agencies are being sniped at and murdered in vertical coffins. As the violence escalates, the mayor directs the LAPD, the only uninvolved and unbiased law enforcement agency, to investigate. Shane's wife, Alexa, under orders from Chief Tony Filosiani, assigns him to the case.

Almost immediately, Scully is thrust into a nightmare of police intrigue and finds himself with no friends in law enforcement, isolated in a lethal no-man's-land between two warring agencies.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The title of the latest entry in Cannell's Shane Scully LAPD series (Hollywood Tough; The Tin Collectors; The Viking Funeral) is police jargon for any doorway, which is where cops are most vulnerable when clearing a house. As the novel begins, Shane stumbles into a full-scale barricade shootout between gunman Vincent Smiley and surrounding police. After one of two competing SWAT teams at the scene burns down the barricaded house with Smiley in it, a fight over who is to blame begins to smolder. Several subsequent cop shootings (with all victims caught in the aforementioned vertical coffins) fan the SWAT team turf tussle into a conflagration that Shane and wife Alexa, the acting head of the LAPD Detective Services Group, are assigned to investigate. Shane, an old school detective, insists on starting from zero and looking into shooter Smiley's past. Everyone else wants him to forget the gumshoe routine and come up with an instant solution. The pleasure of Cannell's work isn't in the writing ("Bullets whined and ricocheted in a deadly concert of tortured metal"), but lies more often in the interesting procedural elements ("It's very hard to protect a crime scene, so I always start at the far edges first, and work in toward the body"). Shane's still a little rough around the edges, but despite too many pop psychology musings, he's a dependable and satisfying character. Readers will enjoy watching him puzzle out the twists and turns of the plot and watch breathlessly as he undertakes a climactic high-speed chase in a souped-up dune buggy on a military shooting range. (Jan.) Forecast: It's no surprise that Cannell's novels have a cinematic bent as he's the creator or co-creator of 38 television shows and author of more than 350 scripts for these shows. Solid publisher backing and a built-in fan base should push this one onto some bestseller lists. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

LAPD Sergeant Scully hops to it when violence erupts between members of rival federal bureaus. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews