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 applied the Page 69 Test to his newest novel, Sick to Death, the eighth Andy Hayes mystery, and reported the following:
This time around, the Page 69 Test perfectly encapsulated Sick To Death’s themes and plot.Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.
Three things happen on this page. First, my protagonist, private eye Andy Hayes, receives a text from Patience, a fellow guard at the Columbus Museum of Art which recently fired Hayes. Patience is offering to deliver items left in his locker after his dismissal. Second, Hayes exchanges text messages with his older son, Mike, informing Mike he can’t bring his girlfriend to a family dinner the following night. Third, Hayes awakens from a dream where he hears a voice say, “I’m not really into sports,” and struggles in vain to recall the speaker.
The text from Patience is a part of the book’s subplot. In the opening chapter, Hayes helps stop the theft of a valuable painting, The Boulevard, by Ashcan school artist George Bellows. By chasing the thief and possibly endangering the painting, Hayes violates museum protocols and is promptly fired. Soon, to his dismay, he finds himself named a person of interest in the theft plot and faces questioning from the FBI. Figuring out the real culprits becomes paramount.
The text exchange with Mike goes directly to the book’s main plot. Helping Hayes rescue the painting was a young woman whom Hayes had seen around the gallery. Afterward, she drops a bombshell: she—Alex Rutledge—is Hayes’ daughter from a one-night stand 25 years ago with a woman named Kate Rutledge. Alex isn’t interested in a warm and fuzzy reunion, however. She wants Hayes to find out who killed her mother, an ICU nurse, in a fatal hit-skip accident almost six months earlier. As Hayes wrestles with this development, he makes plans to introduce Kate to his two boys, Mike and Joe, at a pizza place.
The voice Hayes recalls from a dream fits into Hayes’ ongoing journey of redemption. To his great shame, he can’t remember Kate at first, lamenting that at that time in his life, “There had been a lot of bars and a lot of women.” Eventually, he recalls the night they met when he went to Damon’s rib joint with two buddies and she was their server. As Hayes investigates Kate’s death and learns more about her personality and devotion to her work as a nurse during COVID, he regrets once again his wayward past even as he struggles to build a relationship with his new daughter.
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.
Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins.
My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
