Skeletons is Glendon Swarthout’s only mystery/thriller. Once optioned by a producer for famed horror director Wes Craven, Skeletons was never able to get financed for one of Wes’s movies for Universal, too expensive. Film rights are now back in the Swarthout literary estate. The skeleton in Jimmie Butters’ closet is his ex-wife, Tyler. She is beautiful and obsessed, and enjoys painting coins and men’s personals with red nail enamel. Her skeletons are two long-dead grandfathers and an old Colt revolver which she carries about with her like a doll. Tyler is also brilliant in bed and after a showdown between the sheets in New York, she sweet-talks Jimmie into galloping to New Mexico in his classic Rolls-Royce to track down some old crimes, dig up some graves, and sample the regional cuisine. So begins Glendon Swarthout’s first mystery-thriller, which, like his Western, The Shootist, is destined to become a classic of the genre. In its remorsefully skillful blending of the sinister present and the far-from-golden past, an onion-like puzzle is peeled away. Old-times give way to bullets. Innocent men are made to run a Texas horserace – in lawless New Mexico. There is rape. There is mayhem. There is love. Above all, there is one B. James Butters, author of childrens’ books, who hates Evil, fears violence, and is as engaging and unlikely a private eye as ever stalked his prey in Gucci loafers. How Jimmie Butters copes with the skeletons and where precisely they are buried is unfolded with quiet but dazzling cunning by a master storyteller, and whoever embarks on the search for these grim bones will not be able to stop until they have been rattled for the last time. Skeletons is the only mystery Glendon ever wrote, with the exception of a children’s book with his wife Kathryn, Cadbury’s Coffin, which received a nomination in its juvenile category for Best Mystery of 1988 from the Mystery Writers of America. Skeletons took Glendon eight years to research its historical background and break the complex plot, between work on other books, a mystery genre he swore off ever trying again after finally finishing its laborious writing. But try it to see what unusual can happen when a master storyteller ventures off his regular literary track into a very different genre.Here’s a few more great book reviews of Skeletons….A master storyteller…his talents have never been sharper as he reveals mysteries within mysteries…witty, tantalizing and pervaded with a tingling sense of foreboding and danger. Houston ChronicleGlendon Swarthout has a ball that turns into a rollicking good time for the reader….A wonderful Swarthout tale! To reveal any more would ruin a page-turner of unusual gentleness and high spirits. Robert Armstrong, Minneapolis TribuneMr. Swarthout has a highly idiosyncratic style and deploys it to advantage in this unusual story….Past and present are skillfully blended; there is a nice thread of humour; there are mystery and violence. Very well done and to be recommended. Sydney, Australia Morning HeraldThe author of The Shootist together with many other bestsellers has turned his practiced hand to a crime novel and it’s a tour de force–witty, wicked, original and an enthralling read…It’s ultra complicated and pretty impossible really, but the panache and skill with which it is all done make it come fully alive and absolutely unputdownable. John Welcome, Dublin Irish TimesSteamy stuff, delivered in terse, unblocked prose, aerated with humour. Sunday Times of LondonFast-paced and intriguing…a thorough entertaining, can’t-put-it-down novel…This is the mystery thriller you’ve been waiting for! Garry Barker, Fort Worth, Texas Star TelegraphMr. Swarthout has a highly idosyncratic style and deploys it to advantage in this unusual story….Past and present are skillfully blended; there is a nice thread of humour; there are mystery and violence. Very well done and to be recommended.Sydney, Australia Morning Herald…It’s his first crime story and laced with so much captivating mystery, vivid description and colourful, credible characters that it deserves to become a classic of its kind…The author scatters clues here and there and the main one confronts the reader on first picking up the book. But few folks are likely to guess the outcome of a yarn that shines like a beacon in today’s sea of fiction. Bolton, Lancashire Evening News, Great BritainHow this mystery ends will astound and chill many. How the novel ends will charm your spurs off. With humor, brisk pacing and an admirable economy of words, Swarthout engages the reader at every turn…As he has done before, most notably in The Shootist, Swarthout shows the cracks in the legends of how our West was really won. William Harry Harding, Los Angeles Times
