Author Talk and Signing with Andrew Welsh-Huggins

About the book:

Library Journal Mystery Pick of the Month

In a new thriller from the author of The End of the Road, a former postal inspection agent tracks a violent crew through the Midwest to rescue a kidnapped woman.

Mercury Carter is a deliveryman and he takes his job very seriously. When a parcel is under his care, he will stop at nothing to deliver it directly to its intended recipient. Not even, as in the current case, when he finds a crew of violent men at the indicated address that threaten his life and take the woman who lives there hostage. That’s because Carter has special skills from his former life as a federal agent with the postal inspection service, skills that make him particularly useful for delivering items in circumstances as dangerous as these.

After Carter dispatches the goons sent to kill him, he enters a home besieged by criminals—but the leader of the gang escapes with attorney Rachel Stanfield before the mailman can complete his assignment. With Rachel’s husband Glenn in tow, Carter takes off in pursuit of the kidnapper and his quarry, hunting them across Indiana, up to Chicago, and into small-town Illinois. Along the way, he slowly picks off members of the crew and uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy and a powerful crime syndicate, all in service of his main objective: to hand the package over to Rachel. Carter has never missed a delivery and isn’t about to start now.

Introducing a new lone-wolf protagonist to rival Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Steve Hamilton’s Nick Mason, and Gregg Hurwitz’s Evan Smoak, The Mailman is a pulse-pounding series opener with captivating action and enough thrills to leave readers anxiously awaiting the next installment.

About the author:

Andrew, a son of the Finger Lakes and now longtime Ohio resident, is the Shamus, Derringer, and International Thriller Writers-award nominated author of 10 mystery novels and two nonfiction books, and editor of a short-story anthology

His latest novel, The Mailman, is a Library Journal pick of the month. Publishers Weekly said of the thriller: “With full-throttle pacing from start to finish, this will have Jack Reacher fans hoping Carter is back in action soon.”

Andrew's 2023 stand-alone crime novel, The End of the Road, was named one of the best thrillers of the first half of 2023 by Library Journal and called by Kirkus, “A crackerjack crime yarn chockablock with miscreants and a supersonic pace.”

Andrew is also the author of the Andy Hayes private eye series featuring a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned private eye, including the most recent book, Sick to Death, which Deadly Pleasures Magazine called, " … a solid p.i. novel with likeable characters, realistic situations and good detection."

Andrew is also the editor of the Columbus Noir anthology from Akashic Books, a collection of fourteen mystery stories each set in a different Columbus neighborhood, named one of CrimeReads’ most anticipated crime books of 2020.

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Andrew’s short mystery and sci-fi fiction has appeared in multiple magazines, including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Magazine, and many anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories 2021 and 2024\.

In addition, Andrew is the author of two nonfiction books. No Winners Here Tonight, the definitive history of Ohio's death penalty, and Hatred At Home, about the terrorism prosecution of three Ohio friends, which Current Reviews for Academic Libraries called “the most thorough case study of the radicalization of domestic ‘sleeper cells’ to date.”

When he’s not writing or reporting, Andrew enjoys running, reading, cooking, playing the piano, spending time with family, and trying to remember why having both cats and parakeets seemed like a good idea at the time.