Yes, this is a book about people who steal giant clams. It’s also about the grizzled cops and federal agents who are chasing after them. The smugglers aim is on the magnificent geoduck (pronounced “gooey duck”), the largest burrowing clam in the world, and one of the stranger-looking creatures you’ll find in the Northwest. The agents are often outcasts, foregoing nights at home with the family and instead sitting in their parked trucks, staking out waterways through a telescope, or hiding in the bushes taking pictures of a suspicious boat. They go undercover, set up illegal transactions, and engage in old school shake downs to stop the onslaught of ocean smugglers, all of whom are racing to cash in on the multi-million dollar market for these freakishly-large mollusks.

There is obvious comedy here. But it makes the cops-and-robbers tale all the more entertaining. And because this is a work of almost pure nonfiction, taken from interviews with the agents and those they hunted down, it sheds light on a fascinating part of the criminal justice system, our own Northwest ecosystem, and the criminal world. Author Craig Welch, chief environmental writer for the Seattle Times, introduces us to the geoduck, its ocean purpose, and the greater environmental implications of tampering with it (the story also involves butterfly trafficking and crab-thieves, offering a more rounded view of wildlife poaching).

Shell Games is a truly wild story about the detailed problems of the fishing industry, its black-market underbelly, and the truth about what happens when we rob nature. I loved this book, from cover to cover. ~Jared