W M Akers

Critical Hit: A Gaming Mystery W M Akers

How do you win a game that's trying to kill you?A twenty-nine year-old with a dead-end job and no ambition, Callie Myles lives for tabletop roleplaying at Critical Hit, the premier gaming store in the Appalachian hamlet of Jett Creek, Tennessee. There, under the watchful eye of her brother and gamemaster LB, she and her friends wage war, harness magic, and battle evil. When the dice are rolling, they are heroes, but the fun stops the night LB burns to death in a bizarre fire. Asked by her friends to keep the weekly game alive, Callie dons the monocle LB wore during sessions and finds it opens a portal into the game itself, where she can live as her larger-than-life character, the marksman Arabeth. In this imaginary world of great heroes and dastardly villains, Callie thinks she has found the secret to running the perfect campaign until she learns something inside the game killed LB-and that one of her fellow players was in on it.

To save herself, to save her friends, to avenge her brother, Callie Myles must pull on her armor and beat the game from the inside out. A fast-paced hybrid of mystery and adventure, CRITICAL HIT captures the breakneck fun of tabletop gaming, where life and death depend on the whims of a plastic die.