Shellshock

Shell Scott #41

by Richard S. Prather

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?

346 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Richard Scott Prather was an American mystery novelist, best known for creating the "Shell Scott" series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms David Knight and Douglas Ring.

Prather was born in Santa Ana, California. He served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. In 1945 year he married Tina Hager and began working as a civilian chief clerk of surplus property at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. He left that job to become a full-time writer in 1949. The first Shell Scott mystery, 'Case of the Vanishing Beauty' was published in 1950. It would be the start of a long series that numbered more than three dozen titles featuring the Shell Scott character.

Prather had a disagreement with his publisher in the 1970s and sued them in 1975. He gave up writing for several years and grew avocados. However in 1986 he returned with 'The Amber Effect'. Prather's final book, 'Shellshock', was published in hardcover in 1987 by Tor Books.

At the time of his death in 2007, he had completed his final Shell Scott Mystery novel, 'The Death Gods'. It was published October 2011 by Pendleton Artists.

Prather served twice on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America. Additionally Prather received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1986.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shellshock (1987) was one of the only two Shell Scott books published in the 1980’s and after a long layoff following 1975’s The Sure Thing. It is a bit longer than most of the other Shell Scott books and, in places it seems that it could have used some cutting to get the story moving quicker along.

This also stands out as one of the few books in the entire series where Hazel, the switchboard operator at the Hamilton Building on Broadway where Scott has his office appears and has some lines. Hazel here is “the cute and curvy, also bright, bubbly, efficient, indispensable, invaluable, and sometimes very-damn-smart-mouthed little lovely who mans, or woman’s — or, in this day of idiot language, persons — the PBX switchboard and computer corner at the end of the hallway outside [Scott’s] one-man office.” Although if Hazel is so cute and bubbly and smart-mouthed, how come sh almost never appears and almost never has nary a line to say in almost all the Scott novels? It appears Hazel is little changed from decades earlier when these novels first started just as Scott tells us in his narration that he is still thirty as he was in 1950, too.

A bit of an odd plot is set primarily in Arizona, the site of several other Scott novels. An aging hoodlum, through an attorney in Arizona, has contacted Scott and wants Scott to find his daughter so she can sign some papers, but he hasn’t seen her in twenty years (since she was six) and doesn’t want Scott to use her full name in searching for her. Though, she has an identifying birthmark under and around her right breast, which would serve to weed out imposters. And, when Scott places a newspaper ad seeking the missing daughter (Michelle Espirit Romanelle), he is besieged with fortune hunters that Hazel has to fend off and weed through and they show up both at his office and his apartment.

But, of course, what complicates things is that there are others waving firearms (and often firing them) who are after the dear little daughter (who is not so little anymore). And, there is a complicated con game that goes along with everything.

Not a bad novel, but perhaps not worth waiting over a decade for.

[Race Bannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of this book was fun/interesting,
but then it devolves into alot of superhuman
theatrics that defy belief and just disappointed
me.

[Vicki Tyley · Rating 5 out of 5]

“She pressed her full lips together, then pooched them out a little, pulled them back in again. They kept moving for a while, and I watched them, fascinated by the poochiness of those fantastic lips as they moved out a little almost joyously, then back a trifle in what struck me as clear disappointment, then out a little again, and in, as if maybe she was sucking on a mint that was half sweet and half sour, but surely all melted by now, which would have been true even of a cold-rolled-steel ball bearing, it seemed to me, were it to be nuzzled like that by those wild lips.”

Colourful, larger than life characters and writing. Witty and very retro (not surprising given it was penned in 1987), but that just added to its appeal. Also not surprising that Richard Prather’s Shell Scott mysteries have sold more than 40 million books worldwide. Easy reading.