Cutter and Bone

Newton Thornburg is a bit of an anomoly in the modern age. One of the few authors with books on the List who doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, Thornburg is best known as the author of Cutter and Bone, which was adapted into a successful film known as Cutter's Way starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard.

The novel is a fantastic representation of post-Vietnam malaise in America. The protaganists are Bone, a part-time gigolo who chucked a family and executive position in the Midwest out of a sense of the meaninglessness of middle class existence, and Cutter, a disabled Vietnam vet, living in squalor with Mo, the mother of his child. Cutter's intense cynicism is underlay with a real affection for Bone who often crashes on his couch when he is in between 'positions'.

One night Bone happens to see a man pull into an alley and stuff what he thinks are a set of golf clubs into a trash bin. The next day, after reading the paper, he realizes he witnessed a body drop. Further, he sees a picture of a wealthy conglomerate head and becomes convinced that he is the man who was dumping the body.
Cutter and Bone hatch a plan, along with the deceased girl's sister, to try to turn this coincidence into some cash.

Cutter and Bone is a great rollicking crime caper in the vein of Elmore Leonard. However, the books is much more than just a crime novel. Published in 1976, it does a surprisingly good job of capturing the mood of the United States during that time. This is a neat trick for something that was contemporary and show an author with a real sensitivity for the times going on around him. For fans of films like Taxi Driver, Straight Time, or Coming Home, the novel reads like a great 70s film looked.

Thornburg has fallen on some pretty hard times. His wife of thirty plus years passed away, his son died of alcoholism, and Thornburg suffered a debilitating stroke that paralyzed his left side. Although he may not have the accolades of some writers of his genre and era, he left us a great one with this novel.