joe clifford faust

Based on 4 1/2 years Joe Clifford Faust spent working in Law Enforcement, The Mushroom Shift is a snapshot of a different world that isn't that far in the past. Yet while it comes from a time before political correctness, its theme of men struggling to hang on to their jobs is as relevant now as when the book was first written. It’s also the most unusual police story you’ll ever read, with no gunshots or car chases, where the mundane becomes a grind. Profane and darkly funny, it captures all the humor and horror, the triumphs and tragedies that are a part of daily life for those who wear a badge.

It tells the story of Clarence Raymond Monmouth, a deputy with the Badlands County Sheriff’s Department in Modern Times, Wyoming, who is finishing his third year on the despised Mushroom Shift – midnight to eight a.m. – in the final weeks of 1985.

As the year draws to a close, Monmouth comes to realize that the county’s aging Sheriff will soon be succeeded by the political enemy who put Monmouth on the Mushroom Shift to begin with. Survival mode kicks in and he begins to consider his options, interrupted by his crumbling marriage, his drinking, and the never-ending parade of drunk drivers, family fights and perverts that make up small town police work.