This Isn't a Game

by David Moss

Overview

A smart debut sends Jackson Oliver, head of online gambling casino VegasVegas, headquartered in San Jose, Costa Rica, to a New England village where he suspects someone has gotten away with murder—and used VegasVegas as part of the clever con. Jackson not only feels like a chump for accepting a bet that will cost VegasVegas a hundred grand, he's exposed the casino to blacklisting by the Offshore Gaming Association, which could ruin it.

How did this happen? It's a celebrity-obsessed age. VegasVegas posts novelty propositions so its customers can bet on the outcome of TV shows like The Voice and The Bachelorette, and on political elections and celebrity murder trials. VegasVegas customers don't want to bet on speeding tickets or misdemeanor theft. They're star-obsessed. Athlete, musician, actor, socialite—the more the victim or alleged perpetrator shows up on TMZ, the more money bettors fork out. So VegasVegas offered odds on various outcomes in the trial of a movie director accused of murdering his wife. The trial comes fourteen months after Andrew Marvel's arrest, and conviction seems certain. When a customer bets $1,000 that all charges will be dropped—an outcome so unlikely that the odds are 100 to 1—Jackson takes the bet.

Audrey Marvel was killed in the couple's lakeside summer home in Greensboro, Vermont. Audrey's blood was all over Andrew's clothes, which the police found at the bottom of the lake. Andrew's wild account that he'd been drugged with Doxepin and hijacked sounds like it was ghostwritten by the prosecutor. Yet two days after the bet made at VegasVegas, an unshakable video alibi for Andrew surfaces, proving the director was three hours away at the time of Audrey's murder. And all charges are dropped.

Jackson suspects the bettor, a Greensboro resident, had inside information—or worse—making the bet fraudulent and letting VegasVegas off the hook. With no time to lose proving his theory, Jackson hops a plane to Vermont. There, working undercover, he begins to investigate the Marvel murder. A ring of antique weathervane thieves and an attractive crime blogger with movie scripts in her past figure in.

This Isn't a Game starts a series where Jackson will explore both crimes and new career trajectories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781464206306
Publisher:	Poisoned Pen Press
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Series:	Jackson Oliver Mysteries , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	237
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

David Moss is an advertising copywriter who has worked for many national agencies. After writing in every conceivable medium from TV and radio to coffee cup sleeves and menu tray liners, he moved on to screenplays and novels. His script, Saving Flora, about a circus elephant, is in development to be filmed in Puebla, Mexico, in 2017. This Isn’t a Game is his first novel. David lives in Santa Monica, California.

Editorial Reviews

The plot in this tightly written mystery takes concentration to keep everything and everyone straight. Worth it, though. But you can't help but love a story that contains weather vane thieves!

Bookloons - Mary Ann Smyth

2016-07-20
An offshore online casino is caught between bankruptcy and blacklisting when a long shot pays off.Kenny, linemaker for VegasVegas.com, would rather stick to handicapping predictable events like football games and horse races. But VegasVegas owner Jackson Oliver, insisting that BigFatJackpot.com made more profit from the Michael Jackson trial than from the World Series, puts up an entertainment page for sideshow bets, like the outcome of The Bachelorette. The Andrew Marvel trial is a current favorite, with odds running 2 to 5 for a guilty verdict for the movie director accused of killing his wife, Audrey, in their summer home in Vermont. Acquittal is 7 to 4, and 100 to 1 against the charges being dropped, odds so long that Jackson is willing to raise the limit to $1,000 for Cass Gallaway, a nobody from Greensboro, Vermont. Next day, of course, the DA announces the dismissal of the charges, based on a videotape his office received showing Marvel at a motel three hours away at the time Audrey was killed. Jackson can’t afford to pay off; Gallaway threatens to report him to the Offshore Gaming Commission if he doesn’t get his winnings within three days. So to avoid the commission’s blacklist, Jackson leaves sunny Costa Rica for Greensboro, where he bribes the owner of the Morning Loon Motel to give him a room that would normally be snapped up by one of the reporters covering the trial. Readers expecting juicy murder details or an inside peek into the glamorous world of offshore gambling are treated instead to a tepid slog through rural Vermont as Jackson grapples with questions like “Who was the last person to log into Cass Gallaway’s account on the computer at the public library?” and “Why did Gallaway go all the way to Brattleboro to stare at a farmer’s antique weathervane?” It may not be a game, but Moss’ debut isn’t really an adventure either, since the owner of VegasVegas turns out to be BoringBoring.

Kirkus Reviews