The Came of Thirty is Kotzwinkle's first detection novel with a contemporary setting, but Fata Morgana (1977), followed a detective through a mystery in nineteenth-century Europe, and the "children's book" Trouble in Bugland: The Inspector Mantis Mysteries (1983) was a highly praised variation on the Holmes/Watson duo set in the insect world, with various characters corresponding to their appropriate entomological equivalents. Kotzwinkle has used the city of New York as an integral structural element in The Fan Man (1974) and in The Midnight Examiner (1989) prior to this novel, and Seduction in Berlin (1985) and The Exile (1987) both explored the nature of evil as a prelude to its central position in The Game of Thirty.