Bone Eye

by T.R. Pearson

An old soldier with a nose for trouble and a grumpy Sioux squaw for a partner hunts for a lost child across wild and lawless 1870s Kansas.

312 pages, Paperback

Published September 11, 2023

About the author

Thomas Reid Pearson is an American novelist born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of seventeen novels and four works of non-fiction under his own name, including A Short History of a Small Place, Cry Me A River, Jerusalem Gap, and Seaworthy, and has written three additional novels -- Ranchero, Beluga, and Nowhere Nice -- under the pseudonym Rick Gavin. Pearson has also ghostwritten several other books, both fiction and nonfiction, and has written or co-written various feature film and TV scripts.

Reviews

[Robert Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess you could say this is Pearson's retelling of "Heart of Darkness" - our narrator and his motley cohort wander through the Wild West, getting further and further from any kind of settled world, trying to recover a stolen child, and finding all manner of human wickedness and insanity. Pearson's moral universe is somewhat bleak; evil is something visited on humans - not a result of external circumstances - and there isn't much hope for redemption. All a good person can do is persevere, keep both eyes open, and keep your weapons handy.

Of course, since this is TR Pearson, the book is also hilarious. The narrator's voice and observations are akin to a droll stand-up comedy monologue. A good amount of the action is well-choreographed slapstick, funny even as it is dark.

Almost anything by Pearson is worth reading. "Bone Eye" is no exception.

[M D · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘Bone Eye’ is Pearson’s worst work that I have read. Normally his books are comical, not this one. There is a fine line between funny and silly. This one is silly, sometimes stupid. Normally his characters are quirky likeable. Not so in this book. Most are simply weird or implausibly evil. Even the main character is different from previous book that he has appeared in. Here he is boring. Flat. His first-person descriptions of events go on and on. The book is like on giant run-on sentence. I wondered if he would ever take a breath. I worked hard to just finish this mess. Only 250 pages. It seemed like 2050.

[kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supposedly according to other reviews the author was going for humorous. Seriously? I read about 200 pages and gave up. All I got out of this was a H/h riding around in circles through the desert and small towns meeting one one sick or mentally deranged
or evil person after another. This is the weirdest book I have ever read and not in a good way. Stephen King being an example of weird in a good way.

A dnf and in the future this author is safe from me.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a solid western. The flow/writing style took me a second to adjust to, but once you’re in it, it’s a quick read and you can’t help but enjoy the classic themes of a good ole western

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[Luke Karten · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable Western read!

[louise horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third of Pearson's picaresque Western stories. A man adept with a gun joins up with a stoic silent Native American woman and sets out on a hopeless quest to find a missing child. Eventful and amusing. A voice similar to the protagonists in the prior two Westerns.