Shell Games: The Sarasota Thriller That Opens With a Wedding Night Phone Call
On her wedding night, a seventy-year-old Sarasota developer calls the police and says her new husband has just confessed to an old unsolved crime.
That call is where Shell Games begins. Kate is a real estate developer and a force in Sarasota. Charlie is the high school sweetheart she has just remarried. By morning nothing holds still: Charlie denies saying it, Kate’s son-in-law suggests her memory is going, and the FBI reports that Charlie could not have done it. Kate’s daughter Julie starts pulling at the story and finds loose threads in her own marriage instead.
Why It Reads as Florida
Bonnie Kistler writes Sarasota as a place where land is endlessly bought, rebuilt and resold, and she is more interested in what money does to a family than in the crime itself. The novel was published in 2024 and nominated for an Edgar Award.
Start it on a Friday. You will not get much else done.
