An Empty Grave
An Andy Hayes Mystery

“[Welsh-Huggins] excels at storytelling. With a reporter’s eye and a novelist’s flair, he raises the bar with each entry in his series. And his deepening development of Andy adds gravitas.”

Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Columbus PI Andy Hayes never disappoints, and An Empty Grave is no exception. This latest installment of the Andy Hayes Series hooks readers from page one with all the ingredients for suspense. With a keen eye for fascinating crime and clever prose, Andrew Welsh-Huggins is a writer that will leave detective fiction fans in hard-boiled heaven.”

Meredith Doench, quthor of the Luce Hansen Thriller Series

Private investigator Andy Hayes takes the assignment against his better judgment.

In 1979, a high-profile burglar shot a cop, was apprehended, and then disappeared without ever being prosecuted. Forty years later, after the wounded cop’s suicide, his son, Preston Campbell, is convinced there’s been a cover-up that allowed his father’s attacker to go free. At first, Hayes dismisses Campbell’s outlandish conspiracy theories. But when a mysterious Cold War connection to the burglar emerges, the investigation heats up, and Hayes discovers a series of deaths that seem to be connected, one way or another, to the missing criminal. Nothing seems to add up, though, and Hayes finds himself hurtling headlong in the wrong direction down a decades-old path of deadly secrets.

In the midst of cracking the cold case, Hayes has another mystery to solve closer to home: what’s been troubling his younger son, Joe, and why is his ex-wife so eager to have the boy out of her house? Further complicating matters, Hayes learns that another private eye, the captivating but inscrutable Hillary Quinne, is also on the trail of the vanished burglar and needs Hayes’s help. As their professional and personal lives blur, Hayes wonders what he’s gotten himself into, and whether he really wants out.

Andrew Welsh-Huggins is a reporter for the Associated Press in Columbus, Ohio, and the Nero Award–finalist author of six mysteries from Swallow Press featuring Andy Hayes, a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned private eye. Welsh-Huggins is also the editor of Columbus Noir (Akashic Books) and his short fiction has appeared in publications including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Mystery Tribune. His nonfiction book No Winners Here Tonight (Ohio University Press) is the definitive history of the death penalty in Ohio.   More info →