Make sure you read Aubrey’s review of The Mail Man,
the preceding book, here.
The
Delivery (Mysterious Press, March 2026) by Andrew Welsh-Huggins is the
second thriller about former U.S. Postal Inspection Service agent Mercury
Carter. Carter is now a freelance courier, hand-transporting cargo too precious
to entrust to the usual delivery mechanisms.
In Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, Carter is en route to Providence to deliver a vintage 1951
baseball card signed by Cleveland Indians/Boston Red Sox shortstop Lou Boudreau
to 91-year-old Lenny Pellegrino, who had seen Boudreau play in person. Carter,
also a baseball fan, was looking forward to making the delivery and meeting
Pellegrino.
The pounding
rain makes navigation precarious and Carter encounters a wrecked vehicle with
an unresponsive driver, an obvious victim of hydroplaning and diminished
visibility. He is attempting to extract the bloodied woman behind the wheel
when another vehicle stops and its driver, a large man with a gun, demands that
Carter get away from the accident victim. Carter declines and the first
physical altercation of the book, and there are many, ensues.
Thus begins a
complicated tale in which Carter takes on what he thinks will be a quick
delivery in Pawtucket before he goes on to Providence, which turns out to be
nothing of the sort. The quick side trip spirals into multiple encounters with
an assortment of human rogues--traffickers, drug sellers, and IT
fraudsters--each of whom is running a separate con while angling for a larger
piece of the profits from the various scams underway with their colleagues. Double-crossing
and backstabbing abound.
As expected,
Carter’s quick wit and resourcefulness come into play again and again. It takes
some time to sort through the assorted agendas of the multiple players and
their schemes, I had to re-read sections of the narrative here and there to
make sure I understood them, but Carter eventually works his way through a
truly impressive quagmire of grift, larceny, and violence to the other side and
a satisfying ending.
I am grateful
for the early review copy of Mercury Carter’s latest adventure and recommend it
unreservedly to thriller fans who will be pleased to make Mercury’s
acquaintance.
·
Publisher: The Mysterious Press
·
Publication date: March 24, 2026
·
Language: English
·
Print length: 336 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1613167172
·
ISBN-13: 978-1613167175
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3Nv0ZtY
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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