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Loading... Boyos (edition 2005)by Richard Marinick
Work InformationBoyos by Richard Marinick
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Richard Marinick grew up running with the Southie gangs during the Whitey Bulger era, and learned to write during a ten-year prison stretch. He writes what he knows, and his shattering, utterly authentic first novel, Boyos is the result. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Richard Marinick, a man who could well of been one of Eddie Coyle's friends in real life (he spent time in prison for robbing an armored car, which culminated, Mr. Marinick says, in a messy chase in Western Massachusetts), is clearly an epigone of George Higgins. Mr. Marinick is also a master of dialogue, and his characters sound a lot like the New Englanders (e.g. saying "going down New York" instead of "down to New York") with whom I have passed many happy hours of my life.
Boyos is Richard Marinick's first novel, and it is a doozy. A couple of the reviews on this page aver that this is a book that would benefit greatly from a judicious editing. That is indeed true; the first half of the book, while full of lively underworld argot that is certainly entertaining, becomes occasionally tedious. This novel lacks what distinguished The Friends of Eddie Coyle: economy. I would argue that one-quarter to one-third of this book could have been blue-penciled away. That would have resulted in a more focused book and probably made the characters even more vivid. In any case, better editing would have pushed this book, for me at least, into five-star territory.
Hey big publishers: how about giving this man a three-book deal, and then assigning him an editor who can help him tame and channel his obvious gifts as a writer?