I don't know any other mystery novel that uses a D&D game as a parlor scene. This one does. Unfortunately it sucks. It does manage to capture the atmosphere of a badly run exhibition game quite nicely though: At the the end of the game players and audience are frustrated, and the bored reader is glad that this waste of time is over. It's just as well the exposed murderer commits suicide, because this mess would never hold up in court. The whole mystery part of the book seems like an afterthought, a mere excuse to be able to sell it as some, any genre at least. In truth this is a book about SF fandom, but it hardly is science fiction in itself. So after half the book the asshole victim is killed, nobody really is bothered much by that, and the only reason the main character finds who killed him is because he is marginally more computer savvy than the police. But that's not the reason why this book is readable. It is readable because it's set on a small science fiction con in the late 80s, written by someone who knew what she was writing about. There's trekkies trying to organize a Star Trek wedding, roleplayers having meltdowns over their characters, postal gamers using the con for political scheming in a made up world, cosplayers (before cosplay was called cosplay), etc The guest stars are Appin Dungannon, an ass of an author who hates his main character and his fans (guess who ends up dead?), and the main character, a local professor of engineering called Jay Omega. Jay is, to his chagrin, the author of a hard science fiction novel that somehow contracted the title "Bimbos of the Death Sun" and a near-pornographic cover during publication. Jay and his fellow professor/ SO Marion spend most of the novel being bemused by the surrounding antics. Jay is new to fandom, Marion is an old SF fan who's seen it all. The fascinating thing about this book is how it manages to capture SF fandom so well, without resorting to the usual trite clichés. Sure, there are some spots that seem mean-spirited, but even these read like someone wrote from bitter experience. And yes, the parlor scene is an extended roleplaying session. I suspect the author did not really know how these worked or she had some really bad experiences. Altogether: readable for the view of the fandom in the 80s, but don't expect an actual mystery.