Cutter and Bone (Midnight Classics)
*Starred Review* Thornburg’s 1976 thriller may be the quintessential cult crime classic. It’s one of those books that isn’t widely known today—it came and went at the time of its publication, reviewed well but never garnering widespread attention—but continues to be cited by other writers as groundbreaking (George Pelecanos wrote the glowing introduction to the 2001 reprint edition). It’s a post-Vietnam novel as much as it is crime fiction, much like Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers (1974). Its dual protagonists are Richard Bone, once a middle-class midwestern ad man, now a dissolute California drifter, and Alex Cutter, a crippled vet with a serious grudge against the corporate world. Bone sees a man he thinks might be tycoon J. J. Wolfe stuffing something into a trash can. That something turns out to be a hooker, and at Cutter’s prodding, Bone and Cutter attempt to find out if it really was Wolfe who did the stuffing. We know from the start that nothing good can come of their investigation. Cutter would have us think that nailing this one rich guy would be a small symbolic step toward righting a world that went seriously wrong with Vietnam. Bone, like the reader, knows differently but can’t help following the scent. There is a peculiar kind of despair that sinks into the bone marrow of damaged war survivors—film noir was born out of that despair in the post-WWII era—and Thornburg nails the Vietnam version. The ending is pure Chinatown, with a dose of Easy Rider, and it leaves us reeling. --Bill Ott--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.