Review: Board to Death (A Board Game Shop Mystery #1) by C.J. Connor
In a trendy Salt Lake City, Utah, neighborhood, Ben Rosencrantz’s board game shop has become a community hotspot for players of all ages—and for killer collectors.
Back in his hometown of Sugar House, running his family’s board game shop and café, Ben Rosencrantz just can’t seem to get his life to pass go, much less collect $200. Once he was a happily married English professor in Seattle. Now he’s a divorced caregiver, looking after his ill father and a Chihuahua named Beans while still figuring out the rules of retail management. At least the town has become more LGBTQ+ friendly than when Ben was a teenager—and that flower shop owner, Ezra McCaslin, enjoys flirting with him.
But despite his usual clientele of gamers, Ben is barely earning enough to keep the store running and stay on top of his father’s medical bills. Then a local toy and game collector named Clive offers him a winning strategy—to purchase a turn-of-the-twentieth-century edition of The Landlord’s Game, the realty and taxation game that inspired Monopoly, at a tenth of the rare edition’s true value. Suspicious of Clive’s shady, low-priced deal, Ben turns the offer down.
Then Clive turns up dead at the front door of Ben’s shop and a backpack full of $100 bills appears on his doorstep. Now Ben is the #1 suspect in Clive’s death, and unless he and Ezra can prove his innocence and find the real killer, he’ll go to jail for murder—and no amount of double dice rolls will set him free . . .
Review:
Dear C.J. Connor,
I am always on the look out for a good gay cozy mystery. I do not recall whether one of the DA commenters recommended your book, or I purchased it after it came up amongst Amazon recommendations. After the book sat in my TBR for almost a year I finally decided to read it.
The blurb gives you a detailed set up for the story. Too detailed in my opinion, but at least all of it is correct and not misleading.
So Ben is back to Utah after his divorce and because his father needs help in the Board game shop and with every day activities (even if he has trouble admitting that he does need help sometimes). Ben was always helping out in the store, but now he obviously feels the weight of responsibility to keep the store afloat and the store is not doing very well financially. As the blurb tells you, one day an annoying man named Clive comes in and tries to sell Ben a game which would allegedly be worth a whole lot of money, but Ben felt that the deal smelled fishy and did not buy the game from Clive.
And then the events described in the last paragraph of the blurb take place and the story unfolds by the laws of a cozy mystery. Here our couple in the making (Ben and Ezra) both become amateur detectives. Ben because he is now a suspect in Clive’s death and Ezra because he wants to help Ben.
Cue in my usual short speech about having to overcome the idea of civilians investigating a crime here, but with each cozy mystery read, it becomes easier for me. Usually when an amateur detective is a suspect of the crime he decides to investigate, it is easier for me to swallow than when the character just decides to get involved for more random reasons. I also liked the fact that Ben and Ezra investigated together till almost the very end. I was glad that we did not have the character go off alone to confront the murderer. I was glad they went everywhere together, that to me made it look less stupid and dangerous. Of course we have the police detective trying to warn the main character off the investigation, but we do know how that usually goes in cozy mystery. It went just as well as you can imagine here too, but I just rolled my eyes and went along.
I also liked that the resolution of the story did not really excuse the murderer. What I mean is that as far as I know, often enough in cozies the murder victim is either annoying or plain horrible, and here Clive was at least very annoying and not a very nice person to me. However I am glad that the story does not make him out to be a one dimensional character and shows that some people still loved him and more importantly does not really excuse the murderer who certainly may have had the reasons to wish ill on Clive, but certainly not to kill him.
My main problem? Occasional boredom. I did not open this book expecting a thriller, I am more than happy to read a cozy and expect a lower stakes in the plot, however even for the cozy for me this was not too dynamic of a story.
Grade: B-
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