Shell Games
Kirk Russell
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Chronicle Books
ISBN: 0811841863

When a Fish & Game Warden is shown a stash of illegal abalone shells & two murdered poachers, little does he realize he's next.

Shell Games is exactly that -- on several layers -- tortured & butchered poachers near a stash of shells with no abalone in sight; an immigrant diver who should have been collecting sea urchins, is caught doing something else entirely; an informant who keeps phoning Marquez with tips, agreeing to meet & then vanishing.

Fish & Game is a department whose budget has run dry. Lt. Marquez must handle his dwindling resources & still cover a huge area. When the FBI starts breathing down his neck coercing cooperation by offering tools his team only dreams of, Marquez keeps on working the angles, shifting the shells, in search of the smuggling movers & shakers.

Every time Marquez follows a lead the name of an old nemesis, Kline, crops up. Sometimes mere minutes after a murder. Sometimes hours before a transaction.

Marquez & Kline go back a long way to a deadly bust, a relentless pursuit when the hunted turned around & nearly killed the hunter -- Marquez. After years of quiet, Kline is back. Why?

Meanwhile, on the homefront Lt. Marquez's marriage is on hold. Katherine & her teenage daughter moved out three months ago. Now husband & wife are meeting for dinners, & testing for reconciliation. When Maria is diagnosed as anorexic, another shell is added to the already overloaded life of this hapless man.

Shell Games is an atmospheric mystery, set in & around the San Francisco Bay area, a place I once knew well & which I enjoyed revisiting. Kirk Russell's story is rich in details:- driving from clue to clue; team meetings in parking lots; stake-outs; investigation strategies; how a case is worked, as well as the damage such 24/7 work does to private lives. While Lt. Marquez has some fine memories & his observational skills are keen, I could not get any more of a grip on who he was than he could on his nemesis.

Nonetheless, Shell Games is absorbing. Even as I got glassy-eyed with all the day-to-day minutia of running a case & cooperating with the FBI, which has none of the financial constraints besieging Fish & Game, I found myself irresistibly drawn into the lethal cat-&-mouse game. With the advent of plastic surgery whereby a person can change their features, finding out who the hunter was was a relief!

Shell Games will reward you for the money you shell out for it.
(01/11/04)

Rebecca