Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg

(hb; 1976)

From the inside flap

“A scarred and crippled veteran of Vietnam, Cutter is nevertheless not one to feel sorry for. He has a beautiful and devoted Mo, who lives with him in Santa Barbara with their baby son. And he has friends, a government pension, a brilliant if mordant turn of mind. But he also has a savage and unrelenting despair, a ‘recklessness unto death,’ as his buddy Bone describes it─Bone who seems to have nothing in common with him except their friendship and their love of Mo. An ‘establishment dropout,’ Bone has left behind him a junior execution job in Milwaukee, a wife and children and a suburban home. Handsome enough to live off women, he does just that, going with the flow, going nowhere.

“Then one night, walking home, he happens upon a man disposing of a girl’s body. He catches only a glimpse of him, a silhouette in darkness. But the next day, after reading a newspaper account of the crime─LOCAL GIRL SLAIN, BODY FOUND IN TRASHCAN─Bone comes across a photograph of conglomerate tycoon J.J. Wolfe and he remarks on its similarity to the silhouette he saw.

“This is just what Cutter needed, an obsession big enough to fit his manic recklessness. He becomes convinced that Wolfe is the killer, and sets out to prove it, then to blackmail him for it. In his fervor, he drags Bone and Mo and the dead girl’s sister with him. Only after a wild cross-country drive from the Coast to the Ozarks─home base of the Wolfe empire─does Bone begin to understand the real nature of his friend’s obsession, that Cutter is not pursuing a murderer so much as the great enemy itself, them, the very demons that have dogged his life.”

Review

Thornburg’s immersive, hard-to-set-down and offbeat neo-noir novel captures well the fatalistic malaise that suffused the 1970s, with characters─some manic, others burnt out and exhausted─whose personalities and actions drive this Don Quixote-esque quest to its inevitable, appropriate Easy Rider-esque finish. This is an excellent read, its twists and turns character-centric and organic, one that─for its time─updates America’s dark legacy. This is one of my all-time favorite crime reads, one worth owning.

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The resulting and lighter-in-tone film, retitled Cutter's Way, was released stateside on February 10, 1982. Ivan Passer directed it, from a screenplay by Jeffrey Alan Fisker.

Jeff Bridges played Richard Bone. John Heard played Alex Cutter. Lisa Eichorn played “Mo.” Ann Dusenberry played Valery Duran. Arthur Rosenberg played George Swanson.

Stephen Elliott played J.J. Cord. Patricia Donahue played Mrs. Cord. Geraldine Baron played Susie Swanson.

Julia Duffy played “Young Girl.” Billy Drago played “Garbageman.” Ted White, who later played Jason in Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter [1984]─an uncredited role─played “Guard #1.” An uncredited Paul Thomas, ex-porn star, played “Man at table in dive bar.”