The Plan - Softcover

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.

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. Emily Melton