Pop, Six, Squish, Uh uh, Cicero, Lipschitz!

 So, when I was looking up Fourth Down and Out, both Amazon and the library suggested Andrew Welsh-Huggins edited Columbus Noir, part of a much larger series of noir anthologies set in different cities around the US. (I kind of doubt Columbus is big on that list; given the series started in 2013 and Columbus is 2019....)

Anyway, while the stories are ok, and set in places I know, not many of them would be what I'd consider noir. No leggy women coming in to a detective's office, and leading him by the nose into trouble, no real black humor, no jazz playing in the background...

No, we mostly get women murdering their boyfriends or husbands, or getting other men to do it for them. Admittedly, some of it is interesting, like the editor's story about the governor cheating on his wife, and how his aide takes care of the problem on behalf of the governor's wife after he sleeps with her...

Oh yes. Almost none of the people in here are faithful. With a few exceptions, like Yolonda Tosette Sanders' Whitehall story that involves an alcoholic woman trying to solve her brother's murder years later, most of this is people killing off significant others, either theirs or someone else's. Usually over drugs, sex, but occasionally real estate. (Craig McDonald's German Village story being a major example of this.)

I was again sad that, even in Columbus's Gayborhoods, very few gay people played a major part in any of the stories. (One minor exception being Daniel Best's story set in the Short North, but even then the gay person in question in playing sugar daddy to his drug dealer, shows up for 2 paragraphs, then we get back to the felon killing his business partner and sleeping with said guy's wife.) This made me doubly sad, given how much queer coding was built into the old noir and pulp fictions that inspired this anthology. 

On the other hand, Khalid Moalim's North Side story does address several real life issues while giving us a parable on how gossip ruins lives. (In this case, a Somali girl who's much more assimilated makes her father angry by getting engaged to a black man. While this resolves itself in one dead body, and two important people in her life going to prison, it is a look at the weird dichotomy of how African immigrants deal with BIPOC in a culture where they themselves are often viewed as BIPOC.)

Do I wish it was more like what I was hoping for? Yes. I would have even settled for more realistic Tales From the Crypt style stories, where the morality play is there, but wrapped in such shenanigans to make it easier to swallow.

Me-OUCH!

 One of the stores in the Platform I work in sells Andrew Welsh-Huggin's Fourth Down and Out, and after reading the summary on the back, I decided to check it out of the library to see if it was worth buying for mom. 

What I found was, even if Mom would likely not enjoy it, I certainly did. 

Our story opens on Private Investigator Andy Hayes getting the stuffing beat out of him over a laptop in the back of his van, with the assailant also pointing out he lost a bunch of money on a game thanks to Andy. 

We flash back to the start of this adventure, as Andy gets hired at the Cup O' Joe in German Village to find out who's blackmailing his client with a video of said client cheating on his wife with an 18 year old. Which leads to the boyfriend of the 18 year old,  which in turn leads to his parents in New Albany. 

As the book progresses, we find out several people have reasons to want the laptop, from the lady who's been writing English assignments for Buckeye football players to keep eligible; the fixer, who hired her to write said assignments; the dad of the blackmailer, who has some shady financial deals on the laptop; and Andy's assailant, who was paid to retrieve it and got a bullet to the chest and a swim in the Grandview Quarry for his trouble. 

On top of this, we have a secondary investigation into whether or not a professor's wife is having an affair, which ends up being a red herring for the real mystery here. 

Towards the end, we finally find out why Andy's relationship with the fixer is so strained, and get a really good look at (in this case fictional) dirty dealings within the athletics department at Ohio State. (I realize this situation is fictional, I said that in the last sentence. However, given what's come to light since 2014 when this was published...)

I enjoyed it, even if some of the biggest fiction in here was finding parking in German Village less than a mile away from where you were trying to go. I doubt non residents of Ohio would find much of interest here, although you never know.