The Burned Woman (Edward Mathis, 1989)

This one is as full of clichés as they come:

- We have this ex-policeman turned PI
- He drinks too much
- His best friend is a policeman who also used to be his mentor
- Big ass politician/business man is involved
- Big ass rock star is involved
- We have hooker with a golden heart
- And deviant sex hinting incest

 It starts decently by disappearance of our hero’s wife in strange circumstances that include highway accident in which young woman is burned to death. So he goes into overdrive and starts investigation. And since he earns his living by being a fuckin’ PI one would expect this investigation to be efficient and quick one resulting in recovery of his better half. Especially because he has support and resources of local police department behind him. 

Mistake! It drags on and on and is basically reduced to interviewing people connected to the victim although there’s no clear connection between the two events. So after three weeks (!?!!) he basically gives up and starts drinking even heavier and even fucking some young prostitute. What an asshole, he didn’t need much time to forget his beloved one! 

But then suddenly, out of the blue, he gets an idea or clue he missed and cracks the case. Happy end and they lived happily for ever after.

I guess this book could be okay if everything would move at the quicker pace and if things would be wrapped up after few days. But all that drama is just unnecessary, especially because no significant leads are discovered and no events take place that are related to the case. FBI seems to come in just to show (a) how incompetent but still tuff they are and (b) to have one of the agents fuck that poor hooker to show (I guess) how vulnerable and generally fucked up she is. Total ballast. Also language could be a bit less monotone and dialogues sharper.

All in all, routine and forgettable stuff.

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Dan Roman, Vietnam vet, ex-cop now PI

Location: 
around Fort Worth near Dallas, Texas. Present time.

Body count:  3

Dames: 
Susie, kidnapped wife. Charlotte “Charley” Wilkins, the victim. Alicia, her roommate and also a prostitute.

Cover: 
pretty cool and matching the title because there's an illustration of woman’s face and upper body coming out of the fire. A bit arty and a bit comic books style. There’s no info about the author.

Cool lines:

“He’s pretty big star,” she said, as if that explained everything. “So’s the sun, but I don’t want it crashing into my house at three o’clock in the morning.”

He saw it a fraction of a second before I pulled the trigger: he had time to grunt again, widen his eyes, maybe time to know he was going to die.