Cutter and Bone

By Newton Thornburg

"A thriller, and a whacking good thriller, too—shows how much can be done by a writer who knows his business—the best novel of its kind in ten years!"—THE NEW YORK TIMES

Cutter is a scarred and crippled Vietnam veteran, obsessed with a murder he's convinced his buddy, Bone, witnessed. That it was committed by the powerful tycoon JJ Wolfe only makes Cutter even surer that Bone saw the unthinkable.

Captivated by Cutter's demented logic, Bone is prepared to cross the country with Cutter in search of proof of the murder. Their quest takes them into the Ozarks—home base of the Wolfe empire—where Bone discovers that Cutter is pursuing both a cold-blooded killer, but also an even bigger and more elusive enemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781626817463

Reviews for Cutter and Bone

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Cutter and Bone, like Thornburg's Dreamland, is a story that on its surface is about murder and conspiracy, but is more about the twisted characters in it than it about the crime story. Both this book and
Dreamland involve amateurs who are rootless drifters trying to solve a mystery. But Cutter and Bone is the R-rated version, involving not just rootless but decent characters trying to do good in a crazy world, but essentially nihilistic worthless cancers on society's backside.

Cutter and Bone is Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing meets
murder mystery. It's a long strange trip involving two cynical men with no jobs, no real connections, and both half mad. One is an
unrepentant gigolo living off any woman he can hypnotize or crashing in his buddy's pad. He once walked away from a middle management job, a wife, and kids. The other survived Vietnam with one less eye and one bloody stump of an arm.

Witnessing the dumping of a teenage gir's body is what changes their worlds. They set out to blackmail the culprit together with the victim's sister. Then, after drowning in the sea and more booze than twenty bathtubs would contain, it's a trip to the Ozarks with a college co-ed and not much of a plan.

Not your ordinary crime fiction, but a powerful study of despair,
rootlessness, and losing one's mind. No one writes this stuff like
Thornburg. No one.

[dinoreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I originally bought this book because every review I read of it talked about how good it was and called it something like a lost classic. When it was first published it got rave reviews and continues to have more popularity in the UK than in the US. When Newton Thornburg died very little mention was made of it in the US but several large obits ran in the UK. With that background, I started to read.

The two primary characters have few admirable qualities, morally or ethically, and the story is mostly about their plan to commit a felony; however, they are likable and even their plans for a felony carry some twisted moral justification. What makes the characters work is that they seem real if not admirable or likable. I knew people who were very much like each of the main characters; one was a college roommate and the others were guys I served with in the infantry, who came back and just couldn't fit in.

On occasion, the descriptions of their characters were just about to go to the point where my credibility would be exceeded when Thornburg drew back and they remained within bounds of the people I had known. For a 38 year old book, the insights it offers about where the US was, and is, going as a nation are remarkable. Thornburg pretty much got the generation to generation change right and saw what was coming. On a number of other occasions Thornburg has the characters change course or change their minds and he handles it in a convincing manner and better than anyone else I can remember; he also does it in a way the made me think that it was how most people operate in similar situations.

My only real complaint: The novel is two paragraphs too long. It didn't need to have the conclusion/wrap up that it does and would be better without the conclusion it has.

Highly recommended.

[irkthepurist_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an astonishing book this is - really not a crime novel, although I can see why they would market it as such. It's more like a bleak, understated inversion of the classic pulp novel. Whereas a pulp writer would have turned the bizarre partnership of drifter Bone and limbless, eyeless Vietnam vet into one where Bone was the dominant partner, instead Bone is like countless pulp heroes but without any sense of direction or purpose. Instead Cutter dominates almost every page of this book, like some ghastly, ghoulish twisted vengeful angel. It's a hard book to *like* - there's no easy answers to anything, Bone is about as close to a sympathetic character you get even though he's a spineless, self hating drop out - but by golly is it an easy book to admire. I really cannot remember ever having read anything quite like this before. There's a peculiarity to the prose, a strange atmosphere to the whole book which sometimes makes it difficult to enjoy, but certainly leaves images and ideas darting around your head for days afterwards. Stunningly good.

[curious_squid · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.9 stars.
This book seems so quintissentially 70's. Noir laced with dissolution and hopelessness of the Vietnam war and the aging hippies. Not an uplifting novel but so short and succinct that every page seems necessary.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg is a 1976 thriller about two men, one a dropout gigolo called Richard Bone and the other, Alex Cutter, a drunken, one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged Vietnam vet. They live together with Alex’s druggie girlfriend and mother of Alex’s baby, and hustle to bring in enough money for booze, drugs and food. One night while driving home, Boone witnesses a murderer disposing of his victim's body, and although he really didn’t get a good look at the killer, when he sees a picture of a wealthy president of a corporation, J.J. Wolfe, he is pretty sure he is looking at the murderer. Cutter decides that they should blackmail J. J. Wolfe and make some big cash. But while Cutter goes about gathering information and causing havoc he is also exposing them to a killer’s scrutiny. This was a fascinating read. Cutter is full of self-destructive impulses and could be very vicious in his treatment of others. Bone is trying to escape the idea of a mundane American Dream and craves freedom but can’t quite shake his ingrained sense of responsibility. Mo comes from a well-to-do family but has dropped out so far that she now lives her life in a pill and wine induced haze. I don’t believe I have read this book before but I am pretty sure I must have seen the 1981 film starring Jeff Bridges as John Bone as I felt an immediate sense of familiarity with these characters. The author has created a very good thriller but Cutter and Bone is also a book that uses dark humor, violence and a smidgen of sympathy to show the impact that the Vietnam war had on these particular lost souls.