Bonnie Kistler's "Shell Games"

Bonnie Kistler is the author of The Cage and Her, Too. A former Philadelphia trial lawyer, she was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Bryn Mawr College and the University of the Pennsylvania Law School. She and her husband now live in southwest Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina.

Here Kistler dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Shell Games.

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 Sigourney Weaver. Picture her character from Working Girl but age her up to 70. She’s so elegant, so polished, so keenly intelligent. But I can see her veneer crack when her storybook marriage comes crashing to an end. And to imagine about how fierce and vengeful she could then become, you need only to remember her as Ripley in Alien.

Charlie is an ex-Marine, a man’s man, but a salt-of-the-earth guy with a genial, affable personality that endears him to everyone and makes it impossible for them to believe he’s either a murder or a con man. Jeff Bridges, please step up.

Julie grew up overshadowed by a powerful mother and is now married to a controlling Alpha male. She’s very unsure of herself, and although she has a quiet beauty, she strikes many people as mousy. Daisy Edgar-Jones could easily play this role, but think Normal People, not Twisters.

Julie’s husband Eric is an orthopedic surgeon with a God-complex. He drives a Lamborghini and thinks he knows more than everyone else. He’s tall and blond and icily handsome, with a sexual magnetism that keeps Julie in his thrall. Who else but Alexander Skarsgård?

Okay, that was fun. Now I want to see this movie!

Visit Bonnie Kistler's website.

Q&A with Bonnie Kistler.

The Page 69 Test: The Cage.

The Page 69 Test: Her, Too.

Writers Read: Bonnie Kistler (July 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue