Thrillers, Crimes - Fiction, Police Stories, Character Types - Fiction

Final Victim

Name: Final Victim
Author: Stephen J. Cannell
ISBN: 9780061743603

by Stephen J. Cannell

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Overview

A genius, hairless, seven-foot-tall psychopath, Leonard Land is many people wired into the cyber-subculture of Satanism and Death Metal. He is smart and cunning. He is quick, brutal and deadly. And he is everywhere. A renegade U.S. customs agent, a brilliant and beautiful forensic phychologist and a streetwise convict master hacker are on the trail of the maniac who is methodically slaughtering innocent women -- a hunt that is leading a trio of unlikely heroes across an imperiled nation...and deep into the darkest corridors of cyberspace. But there is no system the maniac cannot infiltrate, no secrets he cannot access. He knows he is being hunted...and by whom. And he's determined to strike first -- in ways too terrible to anticipate.

About the Author, Stephen J. Cannell

Stephen J. Cannell is the bestselling author of the political thriller The Plan and the psychothriller Final Victim, as well as the creator or co-creator of over forty television shows, including The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Wiseguy, andSilk Stalkings. He currently heads the Cannell Studios.

Biography

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.

Good To Know

Cannell has severe dyslexia, a learning disability that forced him to be held back three grades before graduation from high school. Says Cannell in our interview, "I made one up, but I was certainly thought Least Likely to Succeed. This condition has helped to motivate me and has allowed me to enjoy my unexpected success as a writer for 35 years."

He has never had writer's block, which Cannell says he thinks "is usually caused by the desire to be perfect. The idea that I would be perfect at anything was knocked out of me by third grade. I write to entertain myself."

On his approach to writing, Cannell tells us, "I always try to write something I have never written before. This is why I have created such diverse TV series, ranging from the cartoonish A-Team to dark, cerebral dramas like Wiseguy."

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Editorials

Washington Post Book World

Relentless...Mesmerizing...Stephen J. Cannell is a great entertainer...The Man can write.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The man who dreamed up such TV heroes as Mr. T., Hunter, Jim Rockford and the Commish now introduces maverick U.S. Customs agent John Lockwood. This hero of Cannell's boisterous second novel (after The Plan) is "one of the best pound-for-pound bullshitters on the planet," who totes a gun with a two-inch barrel (although "he'd never been able to hit anything with it, at least it didn't poke him when he sat"). Not unexpectedly, Lockwood's breezy style infuriates some important superiors, but readers will enjoy how he puts together a team (beautiful Ph.D. Karen Dawson and handsome computer whiz/convict Malavida Chacone) to track down Florida-based serial killer Leonard Land, he of the "brilliant, twisted" mind and "fat, gluttonous body." The story rambles at times and includes too many forced, nick-of-time heroics, some jarring noir penses from Lockwood and an anomalous burst of piety from Karen ("Lead me out of this darkness. In the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen"). The bloody climax sees Malavida and Lockwood, both severely damaged, dragging themselves to the rescue of Karen, who's offered herself up as bait. It's a lightweight, generally enjoyable yarn, and if readers have seen it all before, well, they probably will again, sometime between dinner and the 11:00 news. Author tour. (July)

Library Journal

Cannell, the creator of such television series as The Commish and author of The Plan (LJ 5/15/95), shows his TV roots in this thriller about a pair of U.S. Customs employees who stumble upon a serial killer. Leonard Land, a colossal young man who operates from a converted garbage barge in Florida, uses his computer hacking expertise to cover up a series of heinous mutilations. In the time-honored but clichd manner of so many writers in this genre, Cannell imbues his hero, Customs agent John Lockwood, with a healthy sense of disrespect for rules, regulations, and authority. Lockwood is paired with the beautiful egghead Karen "Awesome" Dawson, whose robust IQ is put to the test by her quarry's devilish hacking skills. Cannell plays fast and loose when writing about technology, and his characterizations sometimes stretch credibility, but his story's frenetic pace and the occasional fresh surprise will keep most readers tuned in until the end. For large popular collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/96.]Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"

Emily Melton

In a sort of "Silence of the Lambs" meets "Seven", Hollywood mogul Cannell offers up a slice-'em-dice-'em thriller that's clearly headed for the big screen. Renegade customs agent John Lockwood has made a general mess of his life. He has deserted his family, infuriated his bosses, and failed repeatedly to make nice with the bureaucracy. Now he has hooked up with Karen Dawson, a brilliant psychologist and criminal profiler, and Malavida Chacone, a brilliant computer hacker, to track down a deranged serial killer whose favorite method of dealing out death is to use scalpels and Stryker saws to slice up his victims. Trying to catch the freak takes the trio on a cross-country trek that climaxes in a nerve-jangling confrontation and has Lockwood, Dawson, and Chacone learning some important truths about themselves in the process. Despite a multilayered plot that sometimes defies credibility, and despite the occasionally tiresome computerese, this is one of those assault-the-senses novels whose energy is guaranteed to hook thrill-seeking readers.

Kirkus Reviews

From veteran TV writer Cannell (The Plan, 1995), an unsuccessful psychothriller that reads like a hodgepodge of recent blockbusters in the genre.

Cannell's TV experience seems both an advantage and a disadvantage here: His dialogue is quick and limber, but his characters are imported directly from central casting. Leonard Land, a multipersonality serial killer, shifts unpredictably between "The Rat," a feckless killer, and "The Wind Minstrel," a pseudo-religious guru. Leonard is a slightly atypical freakazoid evil genius, close to seven feet tall, hairless, sheet-white, and a wizard in cyberspace, where his pals include the lead singer of a Death Metal band. With his copious online talents, Leonard is almost impossible to catch. Unless, that is, you've got a felonious ace up your sleeve, which is what US Customs agent John Lockwood and his inadvertent sidekick, the babe genius criminal shrink Dr. Karen Dawson, have in the person of Malavida Chacone. Imprisoned—by Lockwood—for his illicit computer hacking, Chacone is the only one who can crack through Leonard's cyberspace world, leaving the head games to Karen and the heavy lifting to Lockwood. Leonard's twisted plan involves killing women and sawing off part of their bodies, which he then refrigerates in a salvaged garbage barge. Lockwood, naturally, has screwed up his marriage, and the hunt for Leonard becomes personal when Chacone accidentally clues Leonard in to the whereabouts of Lockwood's estranged wife and daughter. Leonard kills the wife, and Lockwood vows revenge. A series of late-book plot convolutions temporarily disable both Chacone and Lockwood, placing Karen squarely in harm's way and setting up a moderately suspenseful conclusion.

It's hard to believe that Cannell came up with a character as compelling as TV's Jim Rockford. An unrelenting string of cyberbabble does not distract from his second novel's most serious problem: We've seen all this before.