The Yard Dog: A Mystery, by Sheldon Russell opens in the final days of World War II, when the remote corners of the Great Plains hosted camps of German POWs captured in Europe. Near one such camp in Oklahoma, a one-armed railroad bull--a yard dog--named Hook Runyon keeps an eye out for hobos illegally riding the rails and thieves robbing travelers. One morning, a new problem confronts Hook--a body of a local coal-picker has been mutilated under a train car. But Hook soon discovers that the victim may have been dead before the train ran over him, and that a work detail from the German POW camp may have seen something.Is the death connected with black market shipments coming out of the camp? With the help of a moonshiner friend, and a brilliant, beautiful professor who has arrived from New York to reeducate the Germans, Hook pries into the killing and uncovers much more than he ever imagined.
Sheldon Russell is a busy man. The award-winning author of four novels set in the American West, Sheldon Russell saw his last novel win the 2006 Langum Prize for Excellence in American Historical Fiction. Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush also went on to win the 2007 Oklahoma Book Award.
He published his first novel, Empire, in 1993. He followed that suspense novel with two historic frontier titles--The Savage Trail and Requiem at Dawn. Requiem was a finalist for Best Original Paperback in the 2001 Western Writers of America, Inc., Spur Awards competition.
In addition to writing full time, he juggles enough extras to keep three people busy. "Well, I'm a big reader, of course, as most writers are. I enjoy collecting books as well, minor league stuff, first moderns, and then I have a hundred-year old coal-fired forge on which someday I intend to make great things. My wife is a sculptor, and we own a gallery, so I am involved in that world. Mostly I carry heavy objects around for her. I also spend a great deal of time on our ranch where I grew up, a country estate with swimming pool i.e., an old farm house with a horse tank."You'd think a man with that much going on might feel the need to slow down on his writing, but as it turns out, he's just finished the next book in what looks to be a series.
"I just sent in the second of the Hook Runyon series to my publisher. It's essentially about the most bizarre collection of passengers to ever board a train. I'm also doing a rewrite on a manuscript about a mad doctor and another about an archeologist. In between, I make regular trips to the psychiatrist, or should."
With that sort of docket I had to ask where Sheldon looks for inspiration. His answer?
"I'm not so much inspired as driven, not unlike the gerbil running toward what it believes to be the horizon. In all seriousness, solitude and work are essential. In the final analysis, I find inspiration more of an effect than a cause. Like exercise, writing feels so good when it's over that I'm compelled to do it again. I simply can't imagine not writing."
Seems like a good idea to me. And Sheldon has managed to wrangle up a little advanced praise for The Yard Dog, too.
"Pungent as the coal smoke hanging over a railroad yard, Sheldon Russell's elegantly written The Yard Dog offers a fascinating glimpse of raw passions in an unusual World War II setting that is true to its time and place. As Oklahoma as Woody Guthrie, The Yard Dog is bound for glory."-- Carolyn Hart, author of Dare to Die
"The era of the Greatest Generation is brought vividly to life in Sheldon Russell's outstanding novel, The Yard Dog, a compelling story of crime, conspiracy, and disillusionment set in an American POW camp at the end of WWII. The plot is gripping, the writing is crisp, and the setting is both historically accurate and immensely evocative. This is a terrific novel." -- William Bernhardt, author of Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness
James A. Moore is
the award winning author of the Serenity Falls trilogy and Deeper. He
lives in the suburbs of Atlanta and writes thrillers and young adult
thrillers. His latest release is the short story collection Slices.
