The Plan

USA Today

Hot...The Reader can't put it down.

Boston Globe

Thrilling...A blistering page turner.

Publishers Weekly

Veteran TV producer Cannell The Rockford Files, The A-Team, The Commish, etc. brings comic-book plotting and cellophane characterization to his first thriller, about the 1996 presidential election. The ``plan'' dates from the 1970s, when some farsighted mobsters decide gradually to buy controlling stakes in TV networks to give their favorite pols ``face time'' and eventually put their own man in the White House. It's a high-concept plot, worthy of a TV movie, but who'd want to play the hero? Ryan Bolt, an impossibly WASP-y and wimpy TV producer, is asked by short, fat and nasty Mickey Alo, his old prep-school pal, to film a documentary about a long-shot presidential hopeful. As Ryan susses out that Mickey is engaged in buying the presidency for the airhead governor of Rhode Island, he also falls hard for Lucinda Alo, Mickey's advanced degree-holding sister who, preposterously, doesn't know about the family business. The writing is by turns pretentious ``Dawn broke like a cheap wine cooler spreading an ugly red stain on the gray ocean'', silly ``Ryan knew where he was headed but had no inkling where he was going'' and bafflingly vulgar ``A shot of adrenaline hit Ryan's heart like cold piss''. As Ryan is drawn deeper into the mobby machinations of Mickey, and as the fate of the Republic comes to rest on his modest shoulders, Cannell hits every lurid and gory button possible in this cartoonly tale. June

Library Journal

Successful television producer Cannell The Rockford Files, The A-Team has turned his many talents to the field of novel writing. His first effort is the story of a chaotically arranged attempt to subvert justice and place a mobster-backed nominee in the White House. Mickey Alo, the mastermind behind the plan, elicits the assistance of childhood pal Ryan Bolt, recently down on his luck. However, Ryan soon sees beyond the sham and, closely aided by Mickey's sister Lucinda, sets off to uncover the sinister plot. With lots of "shoot-'em-up" scenes and a liberal sprinkling of vulgar language, The Plan would make a better TV movie than an audiobook. Indistinguishable characters and an incoherent and weakly contrived plot make this abridgment, which is narrated by the author, a marginal purchase for public libraries.-Gretchen Browne, Rockville Centre P.L., N.Y.

Emily Melton

Hollywood script crafters are routinely making the transition these days to fiction writing--some more successfully than others. Cannell, whose TV creative credits include "The Rockford Files" and "The Commish", is one of the successful ones, offering an action-packed page-turner of a first novel. Ryan Bolt and Mickey Alo have been friends since boyhood, but two more different personalities would be hard to find. Ryan is a laid-back Californian who's coasted through life on good looks and charm, while dumpy, swarthy Mickey, son of a Mafia don, has used charisma and his father's connections to get where he is. Approaching middle age, Ryan is faced with a series of personal crises, including his son's death and a failed career. Enter Mickey, who offers Ryan a job working on the campaign of presidential candidate Haze Richards. Ryan gratefully accepts, but he soon senses that Richards is merely a puppet and that there's some sinister purpose--masterminded by Mickey--behind the sham candidacy. Ryan is determined to stop the charade, but first he'll have to confront the power-mad, menacing Mickey, whose loyalty to Ryan flies in the face of blind ambition. Even though the dialogue is littered with sound bites, the blow-'em-up, shoot-'em-up escapades require superhuman survival skills, and the characters are a long way from well rounded, most readers won't mind. Cannell leaves 'em begging for more with a story that's pure entertainment from the first attention-grabbing page to the last.

From Barnes & Noble

From the Emmy Award-winning writer/producer of such shows as The Rockford Files, Wiseguy, & The Commish, comes this gripping thriller about the Mafia, their secret control of a TV network, & their plan to run a puppet candidate for the U.S. presidency.