September 1, 2009 Minotaur Books Hardcover: 304 pages ISBN-10: 0312566700 ISBN-13: 978-0312566708

A one-of-a-kind mystery, The Yard Dog 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.

Bringing the clever and grizzled Hook to life, Russell's powerful novel also makes a vivid presence out of the land west of the Mississippi, the realm of hazy sunsets and humming locusts.