Stephen J. Cannell is an author who is best known as the creator and producer of many popular television shows including The A-Team, The Rockford Files, Hunter, Wiseguy, 21 Jump Street and Silk Stockings and The Commish.

Stand alone novels by Stephen J. Cannell that I’ve read

The Plan by Stephen J. Cannell
1. The Plan (1996)

Back of the book mini-review: The selling of the president is an assignment that could salvage TV producer Ryan Bolt’s damaged life and career, But Bolt doesn’t know whom he truly serves. And by the time he finds out, it may be already too late…for one nation under siege.

Final Victim by Stephen J. Cannell
2. Final Victim (1997)

Back of the book review: 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 psychologist and a streetwise convict master hacker are on the trail of a 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.

King Con by Stephen J. Cannell
3. King Con (1998)

Back of the book review: Raised in a world of flimflams, come-ons and con-jobs, Beano Bates has done so well he’s earned a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. But his lucky streak vanishes after a card game in which he scams a cool eighty grand from a notorious Mafia don — who retaliates by having Beano nearly beaten to death. For the first time in his legendary career, Beano wants more than a big score — he wants justice. Aided by a beautiful, no-nonsense female prosecutor and a legion of crafty cousins, all accomplished grifters, Beano, the king of the cons, puts together the ultimate swindle — a well-planned sting of strategy, skill and deception. The target is America’s most feared mob kingpin and his psychopath brother. And in this game, winner takes all!

Riding the Snake by Stephen J. Cannell
4. Riding the Snake (1999)

Back of the book review: 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 LAPD 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.

The Devil's Workshop
5. The Devil’s Workshop (2000)

Back of the book review: They told USC grad student Stacy Richardson that the death of her noted microbiologist husband was suicide, but nothing will convince her of that. Now only her own death will her from the truth. They told “Lucky” Cunningham he was doing his patriotic duty, but not about the terrible plague he was bringing home with him from the war. Now, with nothing more in his life to lose, he’s riding the rails across America — straight into the heart of a nightmare too horrifying to contemplate. White supremacist Reverend Fannon Kincaid told his hobo acolytes that one day their racial “enemies” would perish. Now he holds in his possession the unthinkable means to an unspeakable end.

Runaway Heart
6. Runaway Heart (2003)

Back of the book review: Behind the impenetrable walls of a black-op government laboratory, a top-secret weapon is being developed — a genetically engineered animal with superhuman strength and speed. It thinks. It obeys. It kills without conscience. Lost-cause attorney Herman Stockmire and his daughter Susan are passionate advocates against corporate Goliaths. When one of their employees is literally torn limb from limb by one of the government’s experimental prototypes, Herman knows he’s onto something big. Hired to dig deeper into the employee’s  death, jaded PI Jack Wirta is a man with little left to lose. Armed with nothing more than determination, Herman, Susan and Jack plunge headlong into harm’s way, stumbling upon a nightmare beyond all imagining.

Stand alone novels by Stephen J. Cannell on my reading list

At First Sight by Stephen J. Cannell
7. At First Sight (2008)