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The job seems easy enough at first for private investigator Andy Hayes: save his client's reputation by retrieving a laptop and erasing a troublesome video from its hard drive. But that's before someone breaks into Andy's apartment in Columbus; before someone else, armed with a shotgun, relieves him of the laptop; and before the FBI suddenly shows up on his doorstep asking questions.
Soon, there's a growing list of people with a claim on the computer, all of them with secrets they don't want uncovered. When one of those people ends up dead, Andy has his hands full convincing authorities he's not responsible, while trying to figure out who is-and who's got the laptop-before someone else dies. Soon the trail leads to the last place Andy wants to go: back to Ohio State University, where few have forgiven him for a mistake he made two decades earlier in his days as the Buckeyes' star quarterback. That misjudgment sent him on a downward spiral that cost him a playing career, two marriages, several wrecked relationships, and above all his legacy in Ohio's capital city, where the fortunes of the OSU team are never far from people's minds.
As Andy tracks a laptop and a killer from the toniest of the city's suburbs to its grittiest neighborhoods, he must confront a dark figure from his past and prove that this time he won't drop the ball.
About the author
Andrew Welsh-Huggins is the Shamus, Derringer, and International Thriller Writers award-nominated author of the Andy Hayes private eye series; author of the standalone crime novel
The End of the Road; and editor of the
Columbus Noir anthology. His short mystery fiction has appeared in multiple magazines, including
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and in many anthologies, including
The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021; Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties; and
Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon. His nonfiction book,
No Winners Here Tonight, is the definitive history of the death penalty in Ohio.
Summary
Andy Hayes, everyone’s not-so-favorite former Buckeye quarterback, thinks retrieving a laptop with a damning video should be easy enough—until bodies start to pile up and the case gets personal.
