Now that the holidays are over, it is time to get back into the routine.
Over my week off, I read three books by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes. Although classed as science fiction, they are also murder mysteries.
The first in the series is Dream Park.
Dream Park is a gamers’ paradise, a giant park with live games involving holograms, as well as actors, and puzzles. A group of gamers is just beginning the South Seas Treasure game when in the surrounding tunnels a security officer is found dead, murdered. A valuable chemical scent is missing. Alex Griffin, the head of Dream Park Security, enters the game to find the murderer. He becomes enmeshed in the group and is soon involved in the game.
The New Guinea setting, the zombies, and the myths surrounding them are absolutely captivating. I would so want to participate in such a game.
The Barsoom Project is the second in the series.
This entry begins with a bang. This game is set in an Inuit village and the gamers are menaced by a monster from the sea. Eviane shoots at the members of the Cabal, the group controlling the monster. To her surprise, instead of a flash of red signifying a kill shot, the man’s head explodes.
Eviane has been given a rifle with live ammunition and kills two men very very dead. Now, after a stint in a mental hospital, she is back in dream park to lay her demons to rest. She is participating in a Fat Ripper special. (the participants are trying so hard to stay alive that they barely eat.) Eviane hopes she will remember the events surrounding the deaths but someone is determined to prevent that. It is up to the Griffin to solve the mystery.
The third in the series is the California Voodoo Game.
The new game will be held in a damaged building left over from the big California quake. Before the game begins, Alex Griffin’s new love is discovered murdered. Not long after, it is discovered that someone is trying to throw the game. Why? What is their end goal?
Furious and grieving, Griffin enters the game as a guide, a NPC (a non-playing character) to find the truth as the gamers battle monsters and zombies rising from their graves.
This entry was a bit darker than the first two but the adventure was just as riveting.
Really, really fun.