The Wedding Game

Anneke Haagen #6

by Susan Holtzer

When a member of an Internet mailing group turns up dead, his peers take it upon themselves to investigate the crime, much to the annoyance of the FBI and Anneke Haagen, who is having enough trouble preparing for her wedding.

Genres: Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Cozy

275 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Education
University of Michigan

A U-M alumna who cut her teeth as a writer at the Michigan Daily.

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

The detectives never meet any of the suspects face to face. Cutting edge computer hijinks from 20 years ago, complete with a glossary of computer terms, most still relevant and a few have fallen by the wayside.
I had no idea that the clumsy quotes at the chapter headings were from not just an actual computer game but the granddaddy of computer RPGs; they were fascinating on their own.
The author makes a fair amount of complexity, easy to follow.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The plot has an interesting element - the suspects in the murder are spread across the country and connected via an email list (focused on the topic of video game design). Because of this, it doesn't have the usual sleuthing you expect in a cozy-style mystery. But Anneke and Karl manage to find a way to do some sleuthing, by taking it online. Intriguing!

The computer components are dated in some ways - for example, the way Anneke dissects their web sites (the details of what a web site would contain back then), the constant references to Altavista as her main search engine, being startled when something turns up a couple hundred hits (today we'd be shocked if it was that few). But others are still with us: private email lists focused on narrow topics, newsgroups like comp.lang.c++, and others. And the debate about game design for girls is pretty similar to what it was then (except perhaps the percentage of games for girls is higher, and the violence in games overall is higher as well). Overall, it doesn't detract from the story - and the nascent 'social network' they move in is an essential component of the plot.

[Vicki Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this series because the main character is a computer programmer, but it wasn't until this book, the sixth one, that there was any talk about programming. Anneke Haagen and her fiance, police lietenant Karl Genesko, are about to be married when they become suspects in the murder of an abrasive programmer on a mailing list dedicated to computer game construction. Although none of the members of the list have ever met IRL (in real life), Anneke and Karl are able to discover much about each of them and finally unravel the motive for the murder and hence, the culprit. This was the best so far of an enjoyable series.

[Kayeb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anneke is a computery type, and is on a gaming blog, where one of the participants is killed. She and her employees, the other bloggers, etc solve the murder, and it is a light fun read. However, even I, not a real geek, could tell very quickly that this book is not a new one....the computer language etc is clearly outdated, and turns out this is a 2000 publication.

[February Four · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I admit it. I kept trying to find the word Anneke was supposed to have used, but I can't find it anywhere in the text! The seed is buried way too deep. This was a four or five star read, but losing the clue? >_< Dropped to a three.