Jon Wynn is a professor and the department chair of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has written The Tour Guide: Walking and Talking New York and Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport, and co-authored The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities. His work has also appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Salon, The Washington Post, and other venues. The Set Up is his first novel.

"An unusual novel about contract killing in a world of technology and influencing." --Library Journal

"An M-80 of Vegas noir through an intersectional lens, THE SET UP delivers a roaring romp of deception, identity, desire, and double crosses. In a city built on spectacle, who's really pulling the strings? Wynn's fierce wit, consumptive characters, and keen sociological eye transform the glittering Strip into the ultimate trick mirror. A must-read, and one of the smartest and most fun thrillers I've read all year." --Margot Douaihy, bestselling author of SCORCHED GRACE and BLESSED WATER

"Set in the dystopic present of surveillance capitalism, The Set Up moves between an ordinary college classroom and the underbelly of Las Vegas, gradually peeling back the layers of a world where no one is who they appear to be, and nothing happens by chance. Somehow both pulse-pounding and cerebral, this is a stunning debut novel--at once an addictive, slow burn thriller, a prism refracting its light on the everyday, and a master class in sociology." -Grace M. Cho, author of National Book Award Finalist, Tastes Like War Chosen by Chicago Review of Books as a "Most Anticipated Book of 2025"

"The Set Up is an old-school crime noir in the best way, a captivating ride from start to finish. Following a series of struggling characters connected through their association in a shady guerrilla-marketing outfit known as The Set Up, Jon Wynn's novel takes readers on a windy trip through the Strip to the strip-mall suburbs with plenty of shocks and twists to follow. We deserve more competent literary thrillers, and The Set Up more than delivers with a undeniable plot and sharp writing." -- Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief