Synopses & Reviews
Shell Games is a cops-and-robbers tale set in a double-crossing world where smugglers fight turf wars over some of the world's strangest marine creatures.
Puget Sound sits south of the border between the U.S. and Canada and is home to the magnificent geoduck (pronounced gooey duck), the world's largest burrowing clam. Comically proportioned but increasingly fashionable as seafood, the geoduck has been the subject of pranks, TV specials, and gourmet feasts. But this shellfish is so valuable it is also traded for millions of dollars on the black market — a world where outlaw scuba divers dodge cops while using souped-up boats, night-vision goggles, and weighted belts to pluck the succulent treasures from the sea floor. And the greatest dangers come from rival poachers who resort to arson and hit men to eliminate competition and stake their claim in the geoduck market.
Detective Ed Volz spent his life chasing elk-antler thieves, bobcat smugglers, and eagle talon poachers. Now he was determined to find the kingpin of the geoduck underworld. He and a team of federal agents set up illegal sales, secretly recorded conversations, and photographed hand-offs from the bushes. For years, they tracked a rogues' gallery of lawbreakers, who eventually led them to the biggest thief of all — a darkly charming con man who called himself the GeoduckGotti and who worked both sides of the law.
In Shell Games, veteran environmental journalist Craig Welch delves into the wilds of our nation's waters and forests in search of some of America's most unusual criminals and the cops who are on a mission to take them down. This thrilling examination of the international black market for wildlife is filled with butterfly thieves, bear slayers, and shark-trafficking pastors — all part of one of the largest illegal trades in the world.
Review
"Welch's utterly compelling true tale of black-market trade in endangered ocean wildlife is astounding and infuriating." Booklist
Review
"The criminals are quirky rather than terrifying and the pacing is measured rather than breathless, making it an appropriate choice for readers who prefer less intensity in true-crime narratives." Library Journal
Review
"[A]n eye-opener, exposing a murky world operating just below the surface." Oregonian
Review
"Mr. Welch...continually circles back to an investigator named Ed Volz and an informer, smuggler and convict named Doug Tobin. They are perfect antagonists." Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
Shell Games is a delightfully offbeat cops-and-robbers tale set in the rough-and-tumble heart of one of America's strangest subcultures, a double-crossing world where tough men and women fight turf wars over shellfish. Photos throughout.
Synopsis
A unique blend of natural history and crime drama, Shell Games by Craig Welch is a riveting tale of rogues, scoundrels, and the hunt for natures bounty in the tradition of The Orchid Thief. A stranger-than-fiction true story centered around a larger-than-life character who pursued a larger-than-life clam—the Geoduck—and then led wildlife police on a two-year-long chase, Shell Games is enthralling and remarkable from page one on.
About the Author
Craig Welch is the chief environmental writer for the Seattle Times. His work has been published in Smithsonian magazine, the Washington Post and Newsweek. He has won dozens of local, regional and national journalism awards, and has been named the national Society of Environmental Journalists's Outstanding Beat Reporter of the Year. In 2007, he completed a fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.