Jay Ruud

Jay Ruud is a retired professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas, now devoting much of his time to fiction writing. He has retold the traditional legend of King Arthur for modern readers as a series of Merlin Mysteries, the final volume of which, To the Great Deep, was published in the fall of 2020. His new series of Robin Hood Mysteries was launched with the publication of Sleuth of Sherwood in June 2022. He’s also written scholarly books, including an Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature (2006), A Critical Companion to Dante (2008), and A Critical Companion to Tolkien (2011), as well as the first full-length study of Chaucer’s short poems, “Many a Song and Many a Leccherous Lay”: Tradition and Individuality in Chaucer Lyric Poetry (1992), a book that was reissued by Routledge in October 2019 after 27 years.

​He taught at UCA and chaired the English department for 13 years, prior to which he was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He has a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is married to the thoroughly awesome poet and novelist Stacey Margaret Jones. He has two more or less adult children, and as many spectacular dogs as grandchildren (four). He has been to all seven continents, is a lifetime Chicago Cubs fan, and dabbles in community theater, where he once played his own daughter’s mother.

Sleuth of Sherwood - A Robin Hood Mystery

Mystery, Fantasy

Robin Hood, leader of an outlaw band of Sherwood Forest, befriends an impoverished knight who is about to lose his ancestral lands after his son Peter accidently killed a rival knight, Sir Walter, in a tournament. The Abbot of St. Mary’s, who served as judge in Peter’s trial, had imposed a huge fine on the knight, who had to put up his lands as surety for the fine. Robin and Little John suspect that the abbot is only after the estate, and find that he has also conspired to control the lands of the new Countess of Chesterfield by kidnapping her in order to force her to marry his kinsman Sir Walter—who is not dead after all but in hiding with the kidnapped countess. Robin must trick Walter’s mother into revealing his whereabouts, rescue the countess from her prison, and ultimately confront the abbot in his den. It’s a tall order, but along the way Robin is going to have to rescue Little John’s partner Will Stutely from hanging and seduce the Sheriff of Nottingham’s wife as well. Well, he doesn’t have to do the latter, but some things just happen.

To the Great Deep - A Merlin Mystery

Mystery, Fantasy

When Sir Agravain leads a dozen knights to arrest him in the queen’s chamber, Lancelot kills them all in his defense—all except the villainous Mordred, who pushes the king to make war on the escaped Lancelot and to burn the queen for treason. On the morning of the queen’s execution Lancelot leads an army of his supporters to scatter King Arthur’s knights and rescue Guinevere from the flames, leaving several of Arthur’s knights dead in his wake, including Sir Gawain’s favorite brother Gareth. Gawain, chief of what is left of the Round Table knights, insists that the king besiege Lancelot and Guinevere at the castle of Joyous Gard, goading Lancelot to come and fight him in single combat. But Merlin, examining the bodies on the battlefield, realizes that Gareth and three other knights were killed not by Lancelot’s mounted army but by someone on the ground who attacked them from behind during the melee. Once again it is up to Merlin and Gildas to find the real killer of Sir Gareth before Arthur’s reign is brought down completely by the warring knights and by the machinations of Mordred, who has been left behind to rule in the king’s stead.

The Knight of the Cart - A Merlin Mystery

Mystery, Fantasy

King Arthur has just appointed a group of new knights to the Round Table—but Sir Meliagaunt is not among them. Embittered and feeling overlooked, Meliagaunt devises a mad plan to catch Arthur’s notice. He kidnaps Queen Guinevere, accuses her of adultery, and demands a trial by combat to prove his charge. Holding her prisoner at his fortified castle of Gorre, Meliagaunt hopes to force one of Arthur’s greatest knights to fight him. Sir Lancelot is the man for the task. But after hiding in a prison cart during his journey, he disappears. Once again, Merlin is called upon not only for his magic abilities, but for his investigative skills. Together with the newly knighted Sir Gildas, he must find Lancelot and bring him back to Camelot in time to save the queen from the stake.

Lost in the Quagmire

Mystery, Fantasy

When Sir Galahad arrives in Camelot to fulfill his destiny, the presence of Lancelot’s illegitimate son disturbs Queen Guinevere. But the young knight’s vision of the Holy Grail at Pentecost inspires the entire fellowship of the Round Table to rush off in quest of Christendom’s most holy relic. But as the quest gets under way, Sir Gawain and Sir Ywain are both seriously wounded, and Sir Safer and Sir Ironside are killed by a mysterious White Knight, who claims to impose rules upon the quest. And this is just the beginning. When knight after knight turns up dead or gravely wounded, sometimes at the hands of their fellow knights, Gildas and Merlin begin to suspect some sinister force behind the Grail madness, bent on nothing less than the destruction of Arthur and his table. They begin their own quest: to find the conspirator or conspirators behind the deaths of Arthur’s good knights. They are destined to lose a number of close comrades, and Gildas finds himself finally forced to prove his worth as a potential knight, facing down an armed and mounted enemy with nothing less than the lives of Merlin and his master Sir Gareth at stake.