Shane Scully (abridged)

Back on the LAPD and hailed as a hero after taking down a deadly gang of rogue cops, Shane Scully finds himself unwittingly involved in a criminal scheme to take over the movie business. Soon, he will have to go deep undercover to take down a Hollywood conspiracy. At a glamorous party with his new wife, Alexandra, Shane hears a world-famous director make an ominous remark about the deaths of his ex-wives. This is more than police business, it’s personal: Alexandra’s closest friend is engaged to the producer.

In Shane Scully's most terrifying case to date, two elite SWAT units from the L.A. Sheriff's Department and the ATF appear to be engaged in a deadly midnight war. Officers from both agencies are being sniped at and murdered in vertical coffins. As the violence escalates, the mayor directs the LAPD, the only uninvolved and unbiased law enforcement agency, to investigate. Shane's wife, Alexa, under orders from Chief Tony Filosiani, assigns him to the case.

Shane Scully and his partner are assigned to the case of "the Fingertip Killer"—a serial murderer preying on homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Every two weeks he strikes: he beats his victims, then shoots them in the back of the head. Once they're dead, he cuts off their fingertips, closes their eyes, and tosses them in the river. The latest killing, however, does not quite fit the pattern. It appears to be the work of the Fingertip Killer, but Scully suspects an elaborate copycat murder meant to hide a criminal conspiracy.

Leaving L.A.'s Parker Center, Shane Scully and his wife, Alexa, agree to meet at home in one hour. Shane gets there; Alexa doesn't. In the middle of the night, he's called to a crime scene on Mulholland Drive: The African-American victim, who appears to be a Crip gangbanger, has been executed gangland style. Shockingly, the body is in Alexa's car and her gun is found nearby. But Alexa is missing.

It’s a few days before Christmas when Detective Shane Scully and his wife, Alexa, respond to a call in the Hollywood Hills. The crime scene is the pristine backyard swimming pool of a once-immaculate mansion on Skyline Drive, the site of an infamous murder decades prior, in which a family was killed in cold blood on Christmas Eve. In the ensuing years, the house has been shuttered and left exactly as it stood on that terrible night.

Lita Mendez was a thorn in the LAPD's side. An aggressive police critic and gang activist, she’d filed countless complaints against the department. So when she's found dead in her home, Detective Scully and his partner Hitchens fear the worst: that there's a killer in their ranks. Outside the crime scene, Nixon Nash and his television crew have set up shop. Nash is the charismatic host of a hit reality show called "Vigilante TV," dedicated to beating the cops at their own game: solving murders before they can.