Well, it's better than Mazes & Monsters though it shares the same problem: it's overlong for the subject matter. As for the reliability of the author, a character to be sure, I really didn't care going in about its reliability already being familiar with the facts in the tragic Dallas Egbert case. The book is a quick read but does tend to seem to spin its wheels simply to fill space though at times it seems to hit on a moment of genuine suspense here and there. It's simply not worth the time to read though I did like the descriptions of the steam-tunnels where Dear's "suffering" seemed a throw-back to the fiction of R.E. Howard, in a way. The chapter on the D&D game however was an absolute slog though a little funny in certain spots. The book overall is over-long and serves almost entirely as a relic of its time. Its only relevance now is as a footnote in the story of fantasy role-playing games as a part of the ridiculous Satanic-Panic of the 1980s. I cannot recommend this book. ( )

The actual story of the famous disappearance that was connected (erroneously) to Dungeons & Dragons. William Dear was hired by the family as a private investigator to locate James after he vanished, and his company's efforts to find a very troubled young man. A lot of the material deals with leads that failed to pan out, and shows the nuts and bolts of private investigation. (It's rarely as much fun as in fiction.) James Egbert is shown as emotionally troubled, wrestling with depression, drugs, being 16 in a college environment, and James' reaction to his homosexuality. These problems led to three suicide attempts, the last one sadly successful in 1980 (about a year after the events in the book). Although Dear originally speculated that Egbert's focus on D&D might be connected to his disappearance, his subsequent investigation makes it clear to Dear (and the reader) that Egbert's choice of amusement had nothing to do with his deeper problems. ( )