THOMAS BUNN – Closet Bones. John Thomas Ross #1. (***) G. P. Putnam’s Sons. hardcover 1977. No paperback edition.

   The copy on the dust jacket mentions Sam Spade in referring to private detective John Thomas Ross, but the resemblance is closer to Dashiell Hammett’s other detective, the nameless Continental Op. Ross is paunchy, losing his hair and not getting any younger, but yet not easily waylaid by temptation.

   He’s called on to find a missing playboy, patron of an upstate New York hippie community, who disappears shortly after a sudden marriage. The plot is complicated, the writing is competent and quietly unobtrusive, and all the way through there is a curious lack of intensity or involvement, as if we have read it all before.

   We have.

–Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1978.


(***) Most sources call this the first in a series of three books featuring Jack Bodine, another of Thomas Bunn’s private eye creations, but I have one online source that agrees with me, that the PI in this book is indeed John Thomas Ross, his only recorded case. Bunn wrote only the three books. Follow the link to Bodine’s Thrilling Detective webpage.