Bone Game: A Novel Volume 10

by Louis Owens

Book Overview

Bone Game is a murder mystery on a grand scale. Cole McCurtain, a mixed-blood Indian professor of Indian Studies at Santa Cruz, California, is haunted by dreams dating back to events of Spanish California. Images of a Spanish priest murdered in 1812, a rearing grizzly bear, and a black-and-white painted Indian who offers bones in his extended hands come at a time when dismembered pieces of a young woman are washing ashore in 1993. The dreams become...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806128410
• ISBN13: 9780806128412
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Surreal

After reading the novel Bone Game, a common reaction of many readers must be confusion. There are so many visions and dreams in this novel. These visions seem to occur independent of time and space, leading a reader used to highly structured "Western" novels to throw up their hands in futility. On reflection, however, several themes can be discerned from this confusing novel. One overarching theme seems to be the pervasive force of evil that manifests itself throughout the book. Louis Owens definitely has a grasp of criminal history. He has borrowed from real life events to construct his novel. Most of the events in Bone Game occur at the University of California, Santa Cruz where Cole McCurtain works as a professor. During the early 1970's Santa Cruz suffered through a crime wave when three serial killers committed crimes there.Herbert William Mullin was, by anybody's account, a strange bean. A heavy user of LSD and a frequent pot smoker, Mullin eventually suffered a serious psychological collapse. He began hearing voices that commanded him to kill people in order to prevent earthquakes from destroying Southern California.Edmund Kemper embarked on a sadistic rampage of murder and mayhem that culminated with his arrest in Pueblo, Colorado in April 1973. Kemper was a giant of a man, 6'9" tall and 280 pounds. Inside lurked a monster. Kemper despised women, especially his mother. When Kemper began to hunt women, his mother, a UCSC employee, inadvertently aided her son's murderous desires by providing him with a parking sticker for his car. This sticker allowed Kemper to lure young college co-eds to their deaths. After killing his victims, Kemper dismembered their bodies and decapitated them. Kemper buried one particular head in the yard outside his room, with the head facing towards the house so he could "talk" to his victim.The third killer was John Linley Frazier. Frazier's spree was limited to a single event in 1970, when he torched the house of a local doctor. Frazier left a note at the crime scene expressing his outrage at the exploitation of the ecosystem and the rampant materialism prevalent in American society. When arrested, it was discovered that Frazier was a rabid ecologist and a practitioner of Tarot cards. Police believed that the murders Frazier committed might have been linked to the hippie culture movement that existed in the surrounding areas of Santa Cruz.This lengthy description of madness is not an attempt to skirt discussion of Bone Game. Rather, Owens uses these real events to create fictional characters that adopt, and ultimately subvert, Indian culture. Can any reader look at the hulking figure of Paul Kantner and not see Ed Kemper? The murderer in Bone Game uses a car with a UCSC parking sticker to pick up one of his female victims. Kantner even murders his mother in the same way Kemper killed his mother. Paul also admits to burying the head of one of his victims so that it faces his room, allowing him to talk to the head.

Real serial killings inspired this well-written tale.

Set in modern day Santa Cruz, Owens has constructed a fictional thriller based on events in and around the infamous mission's domain. Troubles spirits mingle with malignant minds as Native American professor Cole McCurtain finds himself and his Choctaw family drawn into a story he has dreamed for many nights. Find yourself drawn to Cole's wise young daughter Abby and his wise-cracking cross-dressing Navajo friend Alex Yazzie. This literary novel is a great thriller which provides lots of laughs and some sexy characters along the way. Bone Game is the sequel to The Sharpest Sight, a mystery set many years earlier with protagonist Cole McCurtain coming of age along the Salinas River. Another excellent and very funny literary text that doubles as sexy mystery

Real serial killings inspired this well-written tale.

Set in modern day Santa Cruz, Owens has constructed a fictional thriller based on events in and around the infamous mission's domain. Troubled spirits mingle with malignant minds as Native American professor Cole McCurtain finds himself and his Choctaw family drawn into a story he has dreamed for many nights. Find yourself drawn to Cole's wise young daughter Abby and his wise-cracking cross-dressing Navajo friend Alex Yazzie. This literary novel is a great thriller which provides lots of laughs and some sexy characters along the way. Bone Game is the sequel to The Sharpest Sight, a mystery set many years earlier with protagonist Cole McCurtain coming of age along the Salinas River. Another excellent and very funny literary text that doubles as a sensational mystery

In Owens's narrative a heinous series of murders

prompts the inevitable question of 'Whodunit?" says Margaret Payne of World Literature Today. "However, the text's richness liesin its addressing the more pressing concern and psychological mystery of the contemporary mixedblood Native American:the internal conflicts of 'who am I?' Neither question is easily answered; rather, the dual mysteries' inextricable relationship sustains Bone Game's narrative and creates a much more complex text than the term "mystery" connotes."

Real serial killings inspired this well-written tale.

Set in modern day Santa Cruz, Owens has constructed a fictional thriller based on events in and around the infamous mission's domain.Troubled spirits mingle with malignant minds as Native American professor Cole McCurtain finds himself and his Choctaw familydrawn into a story he has dreamed for many nights. Find yourself drawn to Cole's wise young daughter Abby and his wise-cracking cross-dressing Navajo friend Alex Yazzie. This literary novel is a great thriller which provides lots of laughs and some sexy characters along the way. Bone Game is the sequel to The Sharpest Sight, a mystery set many years earlier with protagonist Cole McCurtain living along the Salinas River. Another excellent literary text that doubles as a sexy mystery.