VIGILANTE

In his valedictory case, LAPD Detective Shane Scully (The Prostitutes’ Ball, 2010, etc.) finds real danger in the dubious world of reality TV.

Nixon Nash is an ex-lawyer, an ex-cop and an ex-con over a little matter of embezzlement that led to a two-year prison stretch. But never mind all the exes. What matters most are his consistently lofty Nielsen numbers. He’s cobbled together a reality show called Vigilante TV that audiences have fallen in love with and cops universally haven’t. Vigilante TV deliberately and relentlessly makes cops look bad, ranging from greedily corrupt to abysmally stupid, leaving Shane Scully smack in the middle of a mess he never made. Whatever else Nash may be (psychopathic, for instance?), he certainly is vengeful. And he clearly harbors negative feelings toward the LAPD and Shane Scully. When ferocious anti-police activist Lolita Mendez is murdered, Nash promptly makes the case a centerpiece of his show and publicly pits his resources against Scully’s in a race to crack it. Challenged, Scully has no choice but to play Nash’s convoluted game. As it hurtles toward its climax, however, he begins to understand exactly what Nash means him to understand: that the stakes are career against career and, in the final analysis, life against life.

Well plotted and smartly paced. Scully goes out a winner.