Winner, 3-Day Novel-Writing Contest (1998)

Meet Jack Minyard, a nice, liberal, milk-drinking, hockey-playing white-bread Canuck from Saskatoon who's stuck down in Memphis, Tennessee workin' for a security company and moonlighting as a private dick.

Ruby Ruby is a soft-boiled murder mystery that follows the trail of our expatriate Canuck as he tries to sleuth out the answers to a puzzling series of pointless and apparently motiveless murders: Who'd want to kill a sixtyish night watchman guarding an abandoned pie factory?

Jack Minyard might have some answers, but then again a hard-drinkin' night shift bus driver named Lomas sees a lot of things that he doesn't always talk about . . . at least not until he's slurrin' drunk.

Praise for Ruby, Ruby:

"Ruby, Ruby exemplifies the genre ... it features a couple of ugly murders in the finest 3-day tradition, weird cop Jimmy Page, a half dozen or so y'allin Tenneseeans both black and white and a church-going Rotarian detective who tells the story in a wisecracking style... " (Vancouver Sun)

Bradley Harris writes about American life from the special position of a Canadian: alien, but able to &lldquo;pass” among those whose language and culture he examines. Undergraduate and graduate education in arts, law, English, linguistics and creative writing, and a varied professional background in government, industry, the military and higher education, contribute to his perspective and style. He crawls like a viper through the suburban streets of Memphis, and lives with, and at the sufferance of, his wife Trish and urchins. He's the author of Incoming and other dramatic plays, short stories, and is at work on three other novels in the Jack Minyard series: Six Flags Over Jesus, The Midnight Clear, and Water Moccasin.

Bradley Harris' profile page