Shell Games: A True Story of Cops, Con Men, and the Smuggling of America's Strangest Wildlife - Softcover

Welch, Craig

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061537144 ISBN 13: 9780061537141

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2011

Synopsis

In Shell Games, journalist Craig Welch delves into our nation's waters and wildlands in search of America's most unusual criminals. The resulting detective story is filled with butterfly thieves, bear poachers, shark-trafficking pastors—and a rogues' gallery of double-crossing crooks who get rich smuggling bizarre marine creatures.

Puget Sound is home to the geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), the world's largest burrowing clam—a seafood delicacy worth millions on the international black market. Outlaw scuba divers pursue this prize while dodging cops, committing arson, and hiring hit men to eliminate their rivals. Detective Ed Volz has spent decades chasing fish and wildlife smugglers. Now, he and a team of federal agents are desperate to take down the most remarkable thief they've ever hunted: a darkly charming con man who works both sides of the law and calls himself the "Geoduck Gotti."

About this title

About the Author:

Craig Welch is the environmental writer for the Seattle Times, a fellow at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and a two-time winner of the Society of Environmental Journalists' top prize for beat reporting.

From Booklist:

In his first book, award-winning journalist Welch covers the wildlife crime beat in Puget Sound, where shellfish poachers wreak havoc on the region’s once bountiful, now imperiled marine ecosystem. Writing with the sizzle of a mystery novelist, Welch portrays a complex, driven, and irresistible cast of real-life characters, from fish cops Ed Volz and Kevin Harrington to Doug Tobin, a larger-than-life Native American fisherman. Tobin was an invaluable if volatile informant, leading Volz and Harrington to rival underworld shellfish kingpins, but the detectives fear Tobin himself may be a master shellfish thief. What are they trafficking in? Primarily the geoduck (pronounced gooey duck), the “world’s largest burrowing clam,” which lives for decades and resembles male genitalia. In hot demand in Asia as an illicit delicacy, the bivalve, like narcotics, sells for “fistfuls of dollars.” Replete with sting operations, hit men, boat chases in fog and rain, the nefarious dealings of a famous restaurateur and Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and clever, tenacious, unsung heroes, Welch’s utterly compelling true tale of black-market trade in endangered ocean wildlife is astounding and infuriating. --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0061537144
• ISBN 13: 9780061537141
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288