Carol O'Connell: Shell Game (UK 2014)

From the Publisher:
The stage is set for detective Kathy Mallory in this acclaimed thriller by New York Times bestseller Carol O' Connell, as she investigates the "accidental" death of a magician.

Mallory Book 5: the fifth NYPD detective Kathy Mallory novel from New York Times bestseller Carol O'Connell, master of knife-edge suspense and intricate plotting.

Detective Kathy Mallory. New York's darkest. You only underestimate her once.

A cop who knows there is no magic in the world

At a sell-out festival of magicians in Manhattan, in front of a live audience and eight million television viewers, a death-defying trick goes tragically wrong.

NYPD detective Kathy Mallory has learned the hard way that things are rarely what they seem. But she is the only cop who believes the death is not an accident.

Welcome to the darker side of NYPD.

Hiding behind the smoke and mirrors is a ruthless killer who will soon strike again.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game. There 's a shooter in the crowd. A Mallory Novel. Headline, ISBN: 9781472212955 (October, 2014), 448 p., £8.99.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game (UK 2001)

From the Publisher:
At a sell-out festival of magicians in Manhattan, in front of a live audience and eight million television viewers, a death-defying trick goes tragically wrong.Detective Sergeant Kathy Mallory was convinced that this was murder, and a murder which, mysteriously, might be connected with the death of a woman half a century ago.

"O'Connell gradually performs the magic of a master storyteller, exposing the lonely heart of Mallory and the vengeance of a killer. Strange and mysterious, Mallory's fifth outing takes the reader to places no other crime writer visits. It's a trip worth making." Val McDermid

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game. Arrow, ISBN: 009929740X (January, 2001), 424 p., £5.99.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game (USA 2000)

From the Publisher:
The seemingly accidental death of a magician during a spectacular televised stunt re-creating a legendary magic trick staged in Central Park triggers suspicion among insiders, including an aged magician in a private hospital and NYPD homicide detective Kathleen Mallory.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game. Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN: 0425176037 (August, 2000), 402 p., $7.50.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game (UK 1999)

From the Publisher:
Oliver Tree had spent his retirement years working out a solution to the Lost Illusion. Now, at last, he was about to give a death-defying performance in a sell-out festival of magicians in Manhattan.

In front of a live audience and the television cameras, four crossbow arrows were fired at their human target. The screams were real, and, tragically for Oliver Tree, so was the blood.

Even if Charles Butler, cousin of the late great Max Candle who had invented the Lost Illusion, was convinced along with eight million viewers that the trick had simply gone wrong, Detective Sgt Kathy Mallory knew instinctively that this was murder. A murder, curiously, that might be linked with the death of a woman half a century ago...

"O'Connell never ceases to amaze, producing what is surely her most stunning novel yet -- anyone unmoved by the soul-shattering climax should give up reading fiction altogether" Booklist

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game. Hutchinson, ISBN: 0091801990 (November, 1999), 424 p., £10.00.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game (USA 1999)

From the Publisher:
From the very first, Carol O'Connell's novels have won extraordinary praise. "O'Connell has raised the standard for psychological thrillers over the last four years," said the Chicago Tribune, and Booklist stated bluntly of Judas Child, "Few readers will be able to resist the charms of her lyrical prose, and anyone unmoved by the soul-shattering climax should give up reading fiction altogether."

In Shell Game, she raises the standard once again. It is fall in New York City. The re-creation of a legendary magic trick goes horribly awry on live television--a terrible accident, everyone agrees. But two people know it is not. One is an aged magician in a private hospital in the northern corner of New York state. What a worthy performance, he thinks, murdering a man while a million people watch.

The other is Kathleen Mallory. Once a feral child, loose on the city streets, she is now a New York City policewoman, and not much changed--a tall young woman with green gunslinger eyes and a ferocious inner compass of right and wrong. For her, the death is too dramatic, too showy, and she is convinced that it will happen again--this perp loves spectacle. But even she cannot predict the spectacular chain of events that has already been set in motion, or the profoundly disturbing consequences it will have for those she holds most dear. For misdirection is the heart of magic. The lady never really gets sawed in half, does she?
So why is there so much blood?

Filled with the rich prose, resonant characters and knife-edge suspense that have won her so many admirers, Shell Game is Carol O'Connell's most remarkable novel yet.

Carol O'Connell: Shell Game. A Mallory Novel. Putnam's, ISBN: 0399144951 (July, 1999), 374 p., $24.95.