Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

One outgrowth of today’s sophisticated technology is online video gaming. It’s incredibly popular, and even young children participate. Game apps are set up so that a person can play alone, with a friend, or with strangers from nearly any part of the world. On the one hand, gaming can bring people together; that was especially true during the pandemic years, when getting together in person was impossible. There are gaming conventions, online communities, and a particular sort of gaming language. On the other hand, you don’t always know who’s on the other end of that game you’re playing. And that can lead to a lot of very dark places. Little wonder gaming has made its way into crime fiction.

Fans of Val McDermid’s Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels will know that Hill is a video gamer. He’s not much of an extrovert, although he is a highly skilled psychological profiler. In that capacity, he frequently works with the police on their more difficult cases. His work is very stressful, and his health is not particularly good. So, he uses video games to de-stress and to fuel his thinking.  For him, gaming is a release.

Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series takes place in Melbourne, where Corinna has a bakery. Over time, she’s gotten to be friends with the other people who live and work in the same building, so several of the plots include those people. One of the shops in the building is called Nerds, Inc. It’s run by Taz, Rat and Gully, whom Chapman refers to as The Lone Gunmen of Nerds, Inc. They’re all expert gamers and computer wizards who are familiar with hundreds of different games and dozens of gaming platforms. They fix and sell computers and games, and subsist on a diet of pizza, energy drinks and soda, and snacks. They don’t really advertise or go out much, but somehow, word has spread of their skill. And more than once, they’ve helped Corinna when she needed technical support.

A video game proves to be crucial in Lindy Cameron’s Redback. In the novel, we meet journalist Scott Dreher, who’s doing a piece on the use of video gaming to recruit terrorists. He’s landed a meeting with legendary game designer Hiroyuki Kaga, so he takes a flight to Japan. On the flight, he meets another passenger who’s playing a new and popular game called Global WarTek. Dreher gets permission to take a look at the game, and as he’s doing so, he finds something that links the game to a group of shadowy terrorists. In another plot line, a crack Australian rescue/retrieval team called Redback has linked that same group of terrorists to a set of tragedies and disasters that’s recently occurred, and they want to go after the group. It turns out that the key to the group’s identity (and to defeating the group) is Global WarTek.

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One isn’t, strictly speaking, a crime novel. But you could argue that there are certainly crimes in it. The story takes place in a dystopian 2045, where energy crises, climate change and overpopulation have created a harsh world. Many people escape that world through OASIS, a powerful virtual reality simulator. It was created by James Donovan Halliday, who’s a sort of god in the gaming world. Before he died, Halliday created a video in which he announced that he’d left clues in the OASIS environment – ‘Easter eggs,’ so to speak – and that anyone who found them all would inherit his vast personal fortune, as well as control of OASIS, which in itself is worth many fortunes. The challenge is a legend in the gaming community, but nobody has been able to crack the code and find the keys. When teenager Wade Watts discovers one of the keys, he decides he’s going to try to win it all. He has to be careful whom he trusts, since everyone else wants the keys, too. Even so, along the way, he makes some friends. He also makes enemies, including people who will not hesitate to kill him. There’s corruption, too, and other crimes as Wade goes along. Still, he’s determined to get to the end and win. This is, among other things, an interesting look at life lived in a virtual environment. A lot of the action takes place in the virtual world of OASIS, and as the novel goes on, we see why so many people are avid gamers.

And then there’s Jeffery Deaver’s The Never Game. Colter Shaw makes his living by collecting rewards. He doesn’t have a specific title (like private investigator or mercenary); what he does involves skills used in a variety of jobs. When he hears that wealthy Frank Mulliner is offering a US$10,000 reward, he goes to San Francisco to learn more and try to claim it. It seems that Mulliner’s daughter, Sophie, went missing after an argument with her father, and now he wants her back. Colter finds out the truth about Sophie, only to learn that the next day, there’s another abduction. And then another. The trail leads to Silicon Valley’s ruthless gaming industry. And Shaw finds that there are eerie parallels between the abductions and a disturbing video game called The Whispering Man.

Gaming has become an important form of entertainment. There are world-class competitions, all sorts of expos and conventions, and more. And gamers have their own culture and way of communicating. It’s interesting to see how it’s all explored in the genre.

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Lana Del Rey and Justin Parker.