The Skeleton Man by Jay Bennett

First published: 1986

Type of work: Thriller

Themes: Crime, death, family, and suicide

Time of work: The mid-to late twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: An unnamed town a short drive from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and a nearby town named Louisville

Principal Characters:

• Ray Bond, a hardworking, reserved eighteen-year-old, determined to attend law school
• Ed Bond, Ray’s uncle, a gambler, who loves Ray and gives him thirty thousand dollars for law school, at the cost of his life
• Mr. Bond, Ray’s father, whom he last saw when he was two years old, a compulsive gambler, who died in jail after being convicted of bank embezzlement
• Mrs. Bond, Ray’s mother, with whom he has a caring but strained relationship
• Laurie, Ray’s girlfriend, who becomes angry with him when he refuses to confide in her
• Albert Dawson, a gangster, who is as efficiently even-tempered as he is calculatingly ruthless in his “business” dealings
• Alice Cobb, Ed Bond’s longtime mistress, who has a history of psychological problems and is killed when she claims to have proof that Albert Dawson had Ed murdered
• Pete Wilson, a treasury agent, whom Ray mistakes for a gangster and who eventually saves Ray’s life

The Story

Like the central characters of most thrillers, Ray Bond is something of a self-reliant loner who begins to feel dangerously isolated as events overtake him. Unlike the situations in most adult thrillers, however, in which each new event and revelation serves to heighten the terror, the situation in The Skeleton Man incorporates few brief acts of violence that go largely unnoticed. The terror then is subtler and more pervasive, undermining for Ray Bond—and the reader—the sense of personal security and community justice that is a basic assumption of ordinary life in small towns.

The story line of this novel consists of a series of conversations between Ray Bond and the other characters. Although he has more than one conversation with each character, each character becomes a prominent figure at different stages of the novel’s development.

The Skeleton Man begins with Ray’s Uncle Ed taking him to the deposit-box vault of the bank to show him the thirty thousand dollars he is giving Ray to finance his dream of going to law school. Uncle Ed swears Ray to secrecy concerning the source of the money, which becomes for Ray a gesture representative of his occasional, restrained, yet somehow special relationship with his uncle.

After Uncle Ed’s apparent suicide, Ray has several difficult conversations with his mother. During one, he presses her to tell him precise details about his father’s gambling, embezzlement of bank funds, divorce from his mother, and death in prison. Afterward, Ray reflects that his desire to become a lawyer has its source in some underlying sympathy for his father, much like his fondness for Uncle Ed. As later conversations with his mother make clear, however, he somehow cannot be completely open with her.

That night Ray agrees to drive to Atlantic City with his girlfriend, Laurie, but he refuses to go inside the casino with her. She becomes angry with him for his seemingly pointless obstinacy: He has not told her anything about his father’s or his uncle’s gambling. Later, as the strain of keeping his secret becomes apparent, Laurie becomes more exasperated by his refusal to confide in her.

Albert Dawson, the gangster who loaned the thirty thousand dollars to Uncle Ed, does not at first openly threaten Ray. Instead, he arranges isolated meetings with Ray and implies the threat with his knowledge of Ray’s background and movements. When Ray seems determined to resist his pressure to return the money, Dawson makes the threat more pointed—first by shooting a resting cat with his gun equipped with a silencer and then by leading Ray to find Alice Cobb’s corpse in the closet of her hotel room.

Although Ray agrees to return the money, Dawson decides that he must kill him as well to avoid being implicated in the death of Alice Cobb. Ray is saved by the intervention of Pete Wilson, a treasury agent who has been following Ray and whom Ray assumed was one of Dawson’s hired guns.

Context

Jay Bennett’s The Skeleton Man is his seventeenth novel, his eighth for young adults. All but two of his novels for young adults have been mystery-thrillers. The success of these novels in particular are reflected in the awards Bennett has received. He was the first to win the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery in successive years—in 1974 for The Long Black Coat (1973) and in 1975 for The Dangling Witness (1974).

In its characters, its narrative structure, its mood, and its themes, The Skeleton Man is representative of Jay Bennett’s best work. Like Ray Bond, the central characters of Bennett’s mysteries for young adults are usually older teenage boys who view themselves as loners and have difficulty confiding in family and friends. As in The Skeleton Man, the characterizations are usually more suggestive than exhaustive; succinct descriptions of settings and character movements establish an effective context for the long passages of constrained, edgy dialogue that are the most consistently remarkable element of his narratives. The reader is led to wonder what will be said next, and not only left to wonder what will happen next.

Reviewers often praise Jay Bennett’s novels for their suspenseful plot structure, yet criticize them for sketchy characterizations. In The Skeleton Man, however, the suspense is built upon a series of small events to create a mood of genuine foreboding; the reader’s interest lies more in Ray Bond’s reaction to events than in the events themselves. Furthermore, the novel remains satisfying despite its convenient ending, which suggests that the most integral conflict is internal, and not external. The reader focuses upon Ray Bond’s mixed loyalties, regrets, resentments, and self-doubts, and not merely the exchanges between Ray Bond and Albert Dawson. In The Skeleton Man, Jay Bennett demonstrates how a simple surface can be made to suggest deeper issues that the reader cannot easily define.