Bonnie Kistler's "Shell Games," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Shell Games: A Novel by Bonnie Kistler.

The entry begins:

Shell Games features Kate Sawyer, a self-made billionaire of 70, who’s just married her long-lost, high-school sweetheart, Charlie Mull. On their wedding night, Kate calls the police in hysterics to report that Charlie confessed to the Tylenol Murders, a notorious unsolved crime from decades before. Charlie says she imagined it––too much wedding champagne––and the authorities quickly establish that he couldn’t possibly have committed those murders. But Kate insists that he did confess, so if he didn’t do it, he must be trying to gaslight her to get control of her fortune.

The story then becomes the plight of her daughter Julie who doesn’t know what to believe. Is her brilliant mother sinking into dementia as her husband Eric argues? Or is her beloved new stepfather actually a con man?

I didn’t cast actors in any of these roles while I was writing it Shell Games––I never do this in any of my books––but the images of the four leading characters were so clear in my mind that it wasn’t hard for me to find real-life stand-ins when I thought about it for this piece.

Kate is glamorous and shrewd and steel-willed but with a tender heart when it comes to her love for Charlie. This would be a plum role for any of our amazing older actresses for whom there isn’t enough good material anymore. The obvious choices come to mind: Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Helen Mirren.

All would be outstanding. But the one who best fits this bill is...[read on]

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My Book, The Movie: Shell Games.

--Marshal Zeringue