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'Lost Man's River' by Peter Matthiessen

Florida's Fate Was A Crime

Sunday, January 25, 1998

By Bob Hoover, Book Editor, Post-Gazette

	Lost Man's River By Peter Matthiessen Random House $26.95

This is the second book in Matthiessen's Florida trilogy, the follow-up to ``Mr. Watson,'' his 1990 account of the killing of E.J. Watson, a real and notorious Floridian who was done in by a mob in 1910. The sequel takes up the odyssey of Lucius, his son, a self-taught historian who tries to identify his father's killers in modern-day Florida.

A dedicated environmentalist and naturalist, Matthiessen has turned to fiction to chronicle the despoiling and destruction of Florida in the 20th century through the Watson saga, a kind of Frank Norris ``Epic of Wheat'' approach.

Writing in the early 1900s, Norris wrote fiction about the railroad and wheat farmers in an effort to expose social ills. He wrote ``A Corner in Wheat'' and ``The Pit,'' but died before finishing the third.

Matthiessen is more subtle, carefully weaving his message through this detective story. He also is a better writer, capable of lovely passages of natural beauty.

He fares less successfully with the humans, however, who are less-than-vivid stereotypes. It can make for tedious reading. It's also hard to discover the years for the present-day story.

This is one for hard-core Matthiessen fans.