Sun 9 Apr 2023
A PI Mystery Review: EDWARD MATHIS – Dark Streaks and Empty Places.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
EDWARD MATHIS – Dark Streaks and Empty Places. Dan Roman #2. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1986. Ballantine, paperback, February 1988.
PI Dan Roman’s base of operations is a town in Texas called Midway City, but his cases seem to take him to all sections of the state, including the timberlands. Between 1985 and 1992 eight of these cases were recorded in print, with up to half of them published after author Edward Mathis’s death in 1988.
The books made a small splash at the time, but I’m sure both the books and Edward Mathis have been long forgotten. (But not by me nor the people who frequent this blog. You can find reviews of three of the books on this blog. I’ll add links to then in the first comment.)
Roman has had quite a few tragedies in his life, including the deaths of his first wife and their son. He seems to be handling it well, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t get melancholy about it from time to time, and in that regard it can affect his perspective on life.
In this case he’s hired to find the granddaughter of a high-powered businessman who’s now retired and has allowed her to become the CEO of his still remaining business holdings. Otherwise it’s a distinctively dysfunctional family, all of whom Roman gets to meet up close and sometimes personal. (Texas somehow seems to bring out the dysfunctionality in families, but in this case, more than perhaps is normal.)
The book becomes surprisingly violent toward the end, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Surprised, that is. Roman’s investigation is something akin to poking a stick into a hornets’ next and seeing what happens. It’s a valid way of proceeding if you survive it. (As well as Roman’s non-stop habit of lighting up another cigarette.)
Rating on my recently reinstated H/B (had-boiled) scale: 7.2
April 9th, 2023 at 4:31 pm
From a High Place. Dan Roman #1
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=45573
Another Path, Another Dragon. Dan Roman #4.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=46011
The Burned Woman. Dan Roman #5.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=28250
April 9th, 2023 at 5:55 pm
You’re right. I’d totally forgotten Mathis’s existence, let alone his books, in the years since his death. I think I may have read one, or at least tried it, but really can’t recall. What you said – “a small splash” – was exactly right.
April 9th, 2023 at 7:35 pm
This, Joe Lansdale, Burke’s Joe Bob Holland books, James Crumley, and the late Bill Crider’s much lighter novels paint a pretty good if slightly jaundiced view of East Texas, not inaccurate mind you, but perhaps a bit more Southwest Gothic than the real thing.
I can personally attest to some of the violence, at least the undercurrent, and have seen more than a bit of the dysfunctional families, but life is a bit more normal than these books make it seem.
Mathis books about Roman have a certain BLOOD SIMPLE feel to them at times with a bit of Ross Macdonald thrown in the mix. They were reliable and sometimes more, but any splash was in a fairly shallow narrow pool sadly.
This one was more in the BLOOD SIMPLE vein than usual.
April 10th, 2023 at 8:31 am
My general rule for reading things is that somebody somewhere in the world has read the book and thinks it’s unreservedly, unqualified awesome. Then any failure to have a similarly awesome reading experience is my fault rather than the author’s.