Andrew Welsh-Huggins is the Shamus, Derringer, and International Thriller Writers-award-nominated author of the Andy Hayes Private Eye series, featuring a former
Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned investigator, and editor of
Columbus Noir. His stories have appeared in
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine,
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine,
Mystery Magazine, the 2022 anthology
Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, and other magazines and anthologies.
Welsh-Huggins's newest novel, the eighth Andy Hayes mystery, is
Sick to Death.
Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:
I read widely, from narrative nonfiction to celebrity memoirs, but most regularly crime fiction
from a continuing ed standpoint.
My first selection is This is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter, one of my favorite writers. Slaughter rotates between stand-alone novels and
her series books about Georgia medical
examiner Dr. Sara Linton and her now-husband, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will
Trent. Slaughter’s books are often dark, often with themes involving violence against women
and children, to the point I’ve likened her style to Stephen King without the supernatural
element. She also writes the most honest portrayals of policing, good, bad, and ugly, that I’ve
encountered outside of Michael Connelly. Finally, she can be laugh-out-loud funny. All those
traits are present in this new book, her version of a locked-room mystery as Linton and Trent
interrupt their honeymoon at an isolated luxury tourist camp to solve a vicious murder and
uncover horrific family secrets.
My second selection is The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. I picked up this 1978 private eye classic mainly because I’d read the 
first line so often in collections of the best crime fiction
openings: "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an
alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma,
California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." For me, the book bridged old
and new gumshoe fiction in its dark tour of the American West, with twists I didn’t see coming.
His protagonist, private eye C.W. Sughrue, is morally challenged to say the least, a conceit that
doesn’t usually work for me but in this case kept me reading.
My third selection is Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke, in which Locke introduces ethically compromised Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. Mathews’ unorthodox 
investigation of the
seemingly unrelated deaths of a poor white woman and a well-off male Black attorney rips the
lid off simmering issues of racism, class, and injustice in East Texas. Locke writes beautifully and
movingly of the landscape and the dilemmas faced by Mathews, who is Black. Sadly, Locke is
sticking to a trilogy; I thought the second book, Heaven, My Home, was good if not better, and
am eagerly awaiting the conclusion, Guide Me Home.
Visit
Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.
My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.
Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.
The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.
Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).
My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.
The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.
--Marshal Zeringue
Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned investigator, and editor of Columbus Noir. His stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, the 2022 anthology Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, and other magazines and anthologies.
