Game

About Game

Game is the second novel in Barry Lyga's Jasper Dent trilogy, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2013. It picks up where I Hunt Killers left off and escalates every dimension of the premise: the stakes, the geography, the threat, and the questions about Jazz's own nature that the first book introduced but couldn't resolve.

When a New York City detective arrives in Lobo's Nod asking for Jazz's help, he can't say no. A serial killer known as the Hat-Dog Killer — a name derived from a signature the police are desperate to decode — has been operating in New York, and Jazz's unusual skill set is exactly what the investigation needs. Jazz and Connie fly to the city, stepping into a case that is bigger, more organized, and more frightening than anything they encountered in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

The City as a Threat Multiplier

Lyga uses New York City effectively as a setting that amplifies both the thriller's stakes and its thematic concerns. In Lobo's Nod, Jazz was a known quantity — everyone was aware of who his father was, and that awareness was both a burden and a kind of protection. In New York, he is anonymous. His abilities work differently when the environment is vast and anonymous too.

The novel also deepens the subplot involving Jazz's father. Billy Dent isn't sitting quietly in prison. The parallel storyline involving his machinations — and the revelation of what he's actually been doing while apparently incapacitated — is one of the most effective elements of the trilogy. Lyga plays a long game with the Billy material, and Game begins paying it off.

Why It Has Been Banned

Game has been removed from school libraries in Florida (Escambia County and Orange County), Tennessee (Wilson County Schools), and North East Independent School District in Texas. The challenges track closely with those applied to I Hunt Killers: serial killer content, graphic crime scenes, language, and the moral ambiguity of a protagonist who exists in the space between detective and predator.

For readers who have followed Jazz through the first novel, Game represents a deepening rather than a repetition. The psychological territory is harder and the thriller elements are more complex. The series challenges readers to stay with an uncomfortable character and to understand rather than simply judge him — which is precisely the kind of intellectual engagement that effective fiction can produce and that makes some institutions uneasy.