A Man With An Agenda

James Dallas Egbert, a college student at 16, vanished from his campus, seemingly without a trace, and sparked the interest of the nation. Egbert was a genius with computers, but he was fascinated by a certain role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons was a craze on campus and many students had taken to playing in the utility tunnels that connected all the buildings. This was dangerous activity as most of the tunnels were not lit, had wildly fluctuating temperatures and were unpredictable. The media latched on to the more fantastic elements of the tunnels left behind by players: a paper mache head, cryptic drawings, beer cans.

The media circus focused so much on the game and its terminology that it was inevitable that William Dear would latch onto that for the title of his tell-all book, especially as Rona Jaffe had achieved success with her exploitative 'Mazes and Monsters' and the Tom Hanks' classic made-for-tv film of the same name. Dears book is easily more exploitative, cashing in on a family's grief, Egbert's own story and peddling to the lowest denominator with fears of sorcery and homosexual sex rings. Everything's bigger in Texas.

Dear was the detective hired by Egbert's family to find him, but the reader doesn't even have to crack open the book to figure out what kind of person Dear is. They don't have to scan the lengthy bragging about his client list, his helicopters, or his tacky ranch compound. The author photograph on the back features this human turd posing with an assault rifle in the cab of something expensive. Compensating much?

Not only is this man a successful detective, solving every one of his disappearance cases, but he has some cool man friends to pal around with. Let's get this straight: Egbert runs away from his manipulative parents, the pressure of school, the lack of acceptance and companionship, is kept prisoner and abused, finally solving his own case by phoning the detective himself.. Dear manages to get himself some help from the nerds and the gays, but having browbeat the shit out of those communities, is baffled by the lack of information he receives. He speculates that they're afraid. Huh. In weeks of searching and billing Egbert's parents, making sure to note how fat the mom is, Dear manages to play one game of D&D and barely cling to his sanity.

I'm not sure how impressed readers were supposed to be. The book was only published because circumstances allowed him to break a promise never to reveal what truly happened. How conveniently profitable.