Customer Reviews

The Yard Dog: A Mystery (Hook Runyon Mysteries)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The basic story line is given in other reviews, so I won't repeat it. I found the story to be both exciting and intellectually intriguing. After a couple of chapters I couldn't put it down, and I was disappointed when I reached the end so soon. I can't wait for the next Hook Runyan story. The main character, Hook, was likeable even though seriously flawed with a drinking problem. The second level characters that the story also follows (Hook's shine maker and friend Runt Wallace and Hook's love interest Reina Kaplan) are interesting, unusual, and relatable. The third level characters that support the story (for example, the prison camp commander, the prisoner's Nazi commander, Runt's mother, and various railroad characters) are also described with care and distinctiveness. All the characters are people of their time and place. The plot moves in up and down waves of action giving the reader bouts of excitement interspersed with time to rest and ponder the mystery. The love of northwestern Oklahoma and the rural railroad setting are obviously well known and well loved by the author; the infection is passed along to the reader. The author has done considerable research into the era and the issues of the closing days of World War II. I feel enlightened by having read the book. Readers of both historical fiction and mysteries will find this a compelling story.

This is a real BOOK! If we could teach students history using books of this kind, we would be really teaching history. I lived through the 30s and 40s, I thought I knew a bit about WWII, I remember the good things about growing up in this time -- but I had forgotten much of the bad. This book brought it all back: the mud, the back breaking difficulties in simply doing laundry, the rationing, the going hungry, the pictures of the concentration camps that filled newsreels, the tough times my parents experenced in "making do." I lived in Missouri, right across the border from Oklahoma and a German POW camp! My God, who knew? Not me. This is the unsanitized version of living during 1944-45 in this particular area of the U.S. and it was a wonderful reminder for me of how life has changed. The author took me on a journey I won't forget in quite a while. Good job!

In Oklahoma as WWII draws to a close, Hook Runyan touches his armless sleeve and thinks back to his ex wife. She walked away without a mark from a car accident that cost him his limb in which he was a passenger and she the driver; she walked away from him too. Currently he lives alone in a junker caboose near where he works at the Waynoka Train depot just south of POW Camp Alva.

When his only friend moonshiner Spark Dugan is found dead in the Waynoka rail yards, no one cares except Hook who knows it his job as the local yard dog to investigate, but this is personal. He begins to uncover unsavory things about his dead buddy including his belonging to a smuggling ring stealing army supplies and selling them on the black market and with ties to the camp. Camp Commander major Foreman refuses to cooperate while newcomer Dr. Reina Kaplan implements an internationally outlawed brainwashing program. Neither of them can deter Hook from his inquiry

This is a super mid 1940s mystery that uses the investigation to provide readers with a deep look at the POW camps on American soil and at rationing American capitalist style. The story line is fast-paced as the YARD DOG Hook does his detective job by conducting an inquiry into the death of his buddy. Although the whodunit is well written and very entertaining, the historical view owns the novel as Sheldon Russell provides the audience with an interesting glimpse at WWII in the Oklahoma home front.

Harriet Klausner

I like crime novels with unusual settings or protagonists, and thus was drawn to this one featuring a one-armed railway "bull" (cop/detective) based in a small town in WWII-era Oklahoma. When a local indigent winds up dead under the wheels of a freight car in an ice house (a facility for adding ice to freight cars to keep perishable produce fresh), it piques his interest and his sense of justice. "Hook" Runyon senses there was more to the death than a mere accident, and his ensuing investigation leads him in the direction of both the local POW camp and a filthy rich local oil baron.

The various threads don't seem to point toward any obvious motive for the murder (if that's what it was), and even with the help of his friendly local moonshiner and a Jewish literature professor, it's not until the very end that all the loose ends start to come together. The crime story isn't that great -- the plot being carried out is pretty wildly over the top, there are a few coincidences too many, a really lame crucial clue, and the classic groaner of the villain capturing the hero and inexplicably failing to kill him despite there being no reason not to.

Still, the book manages to succeed on pure atmosphere. The author does a great job of bringing the railyard, town, and POW camp to life through fine use of small day-to-day details and landscape. It's a great reminder of the fact that during World War II, there were almost two-hundred POW camps scattered across the US (including seventeen in Oklahoma) housing 425,000 Axis prisoners. There has been plenty of fiction based on this history (for example Summer of My German Soldier, The Turkey War, Up in Honey's Room, A Memory of War, Desert War, Pursuit, The Side of the Sky, and Prisoners of War), and this is a decent, if not outstanding, addition.

Part historical fiction, part classic noir, and part mystery Sheldon Russell's Yard Dog is excellent proof that historians are capable of writing more than just dry scholarship. Russell's one-armed railroad "yard dog" Hook Runyon is compelled to investigate the suspicious death of Spark Dugan, a local vagrant whom Runyon has grown to think of as a friend. Set in a small railroad town in WWII-era Oklahoma, Runyon's investigation takes him to a controversial POW camp and into the circles of wealth and power in post-Depression America.

The book is populated with engaging characters complete with the all-too-accurate nicknames that characterized 1940s Americana. Runt Wallace, a young man passed over by the Army because of his short stature, helps Hook investigate Spark Dugan's death in between his duties at the POW camp and his side-business making moonshine. Russell's characters walk a fine line between quirky eccentricity and stale stereotype, but he ultimately produces characters that the reader will find charming and endearing.

Russell excels at creating an atmosphere that will swallow up the reader in the dust and grit of Runyon's railroad world. He sprinkles little expository details that add greater depth and complexity to the setting and the characters. For example, he notes how workers hook the heels of their boots on the bottom rungs of the stools they sat on at the local café or that Spark Dugan's nose stuck out over the rim of the coffin at his funeral. The pacing of the book is slow, but then again so was the pace of the time and place Russell is writing about.

The book succeeds as a piece of historical fiction more so than a mystery. Frequent mystery readers will probably wish that Russell had devoted as much detail to his mystery as he did to his historical details. The ending comes on a little suddenly-a difficult thing to do in a book that moves fairly slowly-and the resolution seems a little too convenient. However, I am captivated by Hook Runyon and look forward to reading his next adventure.

This novel has a great atmosphere: you can almost taste the dust as you're reading about the events in the railroad yard around 1942 or so. The hero is interesting and likable, and the supporting cast is equally interesting and likable. The mystery is intriguing . . . but the solution comes on all at once and in no way seems plausible. It takes some trial and error to write mysteries well: I'm hoping that the sequel, which received excellent reviews, will show that the author is mastering the art of mystery and motive.

I loved this book. It was like revisiting my father who died in 1997. So many holes in is life have not been visited and this was one of them. He was a wild guy in the 30's. Rode a motorcyle and looked impossibly masculine. And he rode the rails. Wild kid! Not the father I knew. This book filled in some of the holes in his life.
He also joined the Army at the age of 35 to fight in WWII. With a wife and five kids at home. So now I remember. The black outs. Curtains on the windows so the Nazi would not see.
I loved the way no baths were taken. It was that way then. And we did not notice or care. And now? We are so santized and yet? We have lost a lot.

Most lovers of the mystery genre will enjoy this book, although it's a bit slow and somewhat repetitive. Things seem to drag on and on. There's many a hitched ride filled with comments about rattletrap trucks or bickering about who is lazier: yard dogs or engine firemen. Perhaps Mr. Russell could channel some of the repetition into more exposition, such as how did Reina, an intelligent woman who had just been badly treated by her current lover, meet Hook so briefly, and be so immediately taken with him? The relationship appeared, fully formed, out of nowhere! It needed a page or two more development, I think. Also, I would like to encourage Mr. Russell to avoid such cliches as "You'll never get away with this" in the future. It felt like he was boilerplating sentences in just to finish the danged book and get it off to the publisher. I was waiting for the bad guy to say, "Come and get me, copper!"

Overall, this is a decent book to read on a cold, dreary winter day. I am looking forward to reading Mr. Russell's next book, and hoping for a little more pep in his step, so to speak, plot-wise.

Would give 3.75 stars - Liked the protagonist - Hook who was balanced with Runt and Dr Kaplan to draw you into this railroad,coal-crusted and depression mystery. The pace was slower than my usual reading fare however the detail & background was luxurious and a deliberate glance into times long forgotten. Would I read another? Yes!

Our book club read The Yard Dog and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is stellar, the characters, historical detail and story are superb. A very good read for those of us who like our history in interesting doses.