Shell Games
A pulse-pounding domestic thriller about gaslighting, glamour and an unsolved crime
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- 7,99 €
Publisher Description
Is her mother's mind slipping, or has her charming new husband spun the perfect con?
'A truly spectacular psychological thriller' Matthew Blake
A dazzling thriller about a young woman whose fabulously wealthy mother might be the victim of an elaborate con or might be losing her mind – and the daughter can't tell where the truth lies.
Julie's mother Kate is a force of nature – a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, and a power broker in Florida politics. It wasn't easy for Julie to grow up in the shadow of such a dynamo, but she loves her mother, and she and her husband Eric are thrilled when Kate marries her long-lost high school sweetheart, a salt-of-the-earth man named Charlie.
But their storybook romance ends abruptly. On their wedding night, Kate calls the police in hysterics to report that Charlie just confessed to a notorious unsolved crime from decades before.
Charlie says she imagined it. Eric says that Kate has dementia. And the FBI says that Charlie couldn't possibly have committed that crime.
Julie doesn't know what to believe. Is her brilliant mother losing her mind? Or is sweet, lovable Charlie gaslighting Kate to gain control of her fortune?
As Julie tries to navigate through this maze of paranoia and mind games, cracks start to develop in her own marriage as it seems that Eric is keeping secrets . . .
Set against a backdrop of rampant development and devastating climate change, Shell Games is a psychological thriller that will make your head spin and the pages turn as you wonder exactly who is doing what to whom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
There's gaslighting galore in this un-put-downable outing from Kistler (Her, Too), which revolves around the veracity of a septuagenarian's explosive allegations. Widowed Florida real estate developer Kate Sawyer, 71, has long been a staple in local business journals and society pages. Recently, she's reunited with—and gotten engaged to—her high school sweetheart, Charlie Mull. On their wedding night, Kate calls 911 in hysterics, claiming Charlie just confessed to a long-unsolved string of murders from the 1980s. Kate's quiet daughter, Julie, gets caught in the middle when her husband, Eric, hears of the accusations and insists Kate undergo a psych eval, claiming she's been showing signs of dementia. Kate refuses, forcing Julie to weigh in on whether she trusts her mother or thinks she's losing her mind. Kistler masterfully keeps the action thrumming with a series of subtle ground-shifts that force readers to recalculate everyone's motives. The narrative never veers into implausibility as the misdeeds and double-crossings stack up, resulting in the rare page-turner that doesn't deflate in its final act. This will keep readers up all night.
