Hook Runyon Mysteries

Dead Man's Tunnel is the third installment in Sheldon Russell's 1940s series featuring yard dog Hook Runyon. Near the end of WWII, Hook Runyon, railroad bull, and his dog, Mixer, are sent to the West Salvage Yard in the high desert of Arizona. Not far away is the Johnson Canyon Tunnel. Though remote and ordinary as tunnels go, it is the gateway to the steepest railroad grade in North America and a potential bottleneck for the delivery of war supplies. So vital is this tunnel to the war effort that a twenty-four hour military guard has been assigned for the duration. Hook's orders are to catch copper thieves and to stay out of sight and out of trouble. But things go awry when Hook receives a call that one of the guards has been killed mid-tunnel by an oncoming train. Lieutenant Allison Capron from the Army Transportation Department is called in to help with the investigation. At first, suicide by train is suspected, but the evidence soon suggests homicide resulting from a love triangle. Unable to fit his own findings into either of these theories, Hook suspects something more sinister.

They say a railroad is little more than a small town that stretches a thousand miles along a single winding thread. And like any small town, gossip is known to travel up and down the rail so fast it might as well be a telephone party line. So when a local runaway turns up dead sixty miles down track under a bridge marked as a safe hobo camp, it becomes Hook Runyon's job to find out what happened before it hits the headlines of the local newspapers. The rail yard bull is dealing with the constraints of a new office job and the presence of a young aspiring criminologist from Back East, a mixture ripe for all hell breaking loose.