Shellshock

An Arizona attorney has a client with a problem. It's no ordinary problem and this is no ordinary client. Luckily this legal eagle happens to be friends with the hawkish private eye, Shell Scott. Scott is a sure-fire shamus with no shame and a pocket full of bullets. But he will need more than a pocketful of miracles to make this missing persons case go away. A father desperately wants to see his daughter before he dies. But she's disappeared. Scott must find her. But he can't use her name. The father is a rich asset. But his affiliation with the crime world is making the case too dangerous for our prowling P.I. All Scott has to go on is a birthmark in a strategic place. But the client won't be so happy if Scott sees it. Shell Scott is back sending ripples of rancor through the criminal underworld but this case threatens to hit our gun-toting gumshoe like a tidal wave of terror. Will Shell Scott get swamped amid the Arizona desert? Or will he shock everyone by riding this crime wave all the way to the bank?

Shell Scott, like Mike Hammer, has been around a long time, though these days Shell has more of Jim Rockford about himor perhaps it's the other way around. Some 40 million copies of Prather's hard-boiled though humorous private eye have been sold since he first appeared in 1950, but Prather's newest novel zips along and still seems as fresh and well plotted as the first. Shell is on the money when it comes to bulldozing his way through thugs, though for a womanizer he displays a refreshing uncertainty with lithesome beauties. This time, Shell is hired by ex-gangster Claude Romanelle to find his "little girl." The case turns into a nightmare that pits him against Romanelle's former partners in crime. It doesn't take the L.A. investigator long to find "little Spree," now a buxom, beautiful 26-year-old, nor does it take him long to be both seduced by another woman or to discover he is being led by the nose by Romanelle. Then Romanelle turns up missing, and people start trying to kill Shell and kidnap Spree. Shell Scott and PI fans will not be disappointed.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.