Winter is the fourth murder mystery novel in this stand-alone series. On a quiet Saturday afternoon during Christmas vacation, University of California San Diego Professor Marcus George stops by his campus office to retrieve a student’s assignment. What he finds instead is the dead body of an outspoken, overbearing colleague who was disliked by many. Immediately, the words of his partner, attorney Bob Abramson, echo in his head: “You never want to be the person who finds the body; it makes you suspicious from the get-go.”

In the chilling new murder mystery Winter, from author and former college professor H.N. Hirsch, Marcus becomes entangled in a murder investigation and reluctantly finds himself playing amateur sleuth. Meanwhile, Bob is coping with a family tragedy and, as his 40th birthday approaches, faces personal demons as well.

Drawing upon his own 40-year career as a professor of political science and law-related courses, Hirsch weaves real-world historical and political context into the fabric of the characters’ lives, as Bob and Marcus face their most difficult challenges as a couple.

Winter is Hirsch’s fourth book featuring the crime-solving duo Bob and Marcus. The first novel in the series, Shade, is set against the backdrop of 1985 Boston, where Marcus, a sharp-minded assistant professor at Harvard, finds his world upended when one of his students is murdered. Enter Bob, the murdered student’s summer roommate. As Marcus and Bob work together to untangle the mystery, a deeper connection forms between them—one that blossoms into a loving relationship. When Bob finishes law school, the couple relocates to San Diego, where Marcus joins the faculty at a University of California campus while Bob begins his career as a lawyer.

The series spans decades, with each of the four installments leaping forward in time. Shade is set in 1985, and Winter, in 2004. Through the evolving lives of Bob and Marcus, the novels trace not only a personal love story, but also the broader cultural and political shifts shaping the lives of gay men in America. Hirsch’s Bob and Marcus mystery series is filled with complex characters, colorful locations and plenty of thrills for anyone who loves a good whodunnit.

Diverse characters are increasingly taking the lead as crime solvers in the murder mystery genre, and Hirsch weaves the cultural realities of a committed gay couple (who become reluctant amateur sleuths) with a chilling homicide investigation on a college campus.

Available from Pisgah Press

H.N. Hirsch is the Erwin N. Griswold Professor of Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he also held a joint appointment from 2005-2014 in Comparative American Studies; served as Acting Chair of the Department of Politics in 2010-2011; and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 2005-06. He began his career at Harvard, where he was Head Tutor in the Department of Government. He later served as Director of the Legal Studies Program at Macalester College and chaired the Department of Political Science at the University of California San Diego and at Macalester. Among his areas of legal expertise are constitutional law and jurisprudence, modern political theory, and gender and sexuality. His first three books in the Bob and Marcus series are Shade, Fault Line and Rain.

 

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.