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BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN won the 1988 Edgar for best original paperback mystery. It was a satirical look at SF cons and their conventions with a murder thrown in.
bimbos
Dr, James O. Mega, an electrical engineer teacher, has taken a booth at Rubicon, an SF con, to publicize his first novel, a hard science fiction tale published under the name Jay Omega. It concerns a space station and the radiation effects, lowered intellect on the female crew members, of a nearby sun. The publisher, much to his embarrassment, retitled it the lurid Bimbos of The Death Sun. He’s a guest of honor at the con.

The other guest of honor is Appin Dungannon, author of a popular fantasy series. He’s a tyrannical despot who looks down on the fans and customarily insults almost everyone with which he comes into contact.

He is murdered, promptly causing a run on all his merchandise available at the dealer tables. The police are in a quandary. Suspects? How about almost everybody in attendance at the con. But no one seemed to have the opportunity.

Omega becomes the impromptu detective on the case and uses a device familiar to old time mystery fans. Gathering all the suspects together, this time in a role-playing game, to get the confession.

A few years later, McCrumb wrote a sequel, ZOMBIES OF THE GENE POOL, that has Omega attending an important media event. Back in the fifties, a young group of fanboys had buried a time capsule filled with their amateur SF stories. It’s thirty years later and some of the group have become quite famous, others are dead. The capsule is being dug up.

One of the supposedly “dead” ones shows up at the unearthing.
zombies
This book is less of a traditional mystery. The murder doesn’t show up until more than halfway through the book and isn’t defined as murder until near the end.

Both are fun books and seem to be readily available at Amazon and the used book sites.