George V. Higgins (1939–1999)

This 1971 crime novel is probably the most dialogue intense book I have ever read. The story is told through the conversations of a number of characters. Very stylish and very tight storytelling. I can see why this would be quickly adapted to a movie. It isn't a long novel but like a good film I felt like I got to know a few of the characters in the short time we spend with them. None of them are people you'd want to know. None of them are friends despite the title. They are all crime punks show more and someone is going down. These guys have a code, but it is mostly based on fear. Fear of what will happen to you if you give someone a bum deal or rat them out a little. Eddie gets a bum deal. This is good intense stuff and a must read for fans of the genre. I never saw the film but now I want to. I felt sorry for some of these guys, especially Eddie. 3 1/2 - 4 stars show less

The Friends of Eddie Coyle may be one of the most influential neo-noirs of the 20th century. The titular Eddie Coyle is a small time gunrunner and mob affiliate facing a few years of Federal prison time. Aside from his career, he's basically a middle class guy, and he doesn't want to spend a couple years on ice away from his wife and kids. The only way out is to give the cops enough evidence on someone more interesting to get his bootlegging charges dropped. Meanwhile, other small time hoods show more are running their own schemes: selling machine guns to political radicals, robbing banks, and running a bar/mafia answer service, all under the knowledge that any of them might turn rat.

The story unfolds through looping, discursive, incredibly realistic dialog. These are guys with a lot of street smarts and not a lot of wisdom, trying to put together their deals, feel out the other side, and mostly gripe about their lot in life. Nobody including the cops, who are just another set of crime adjacent working stiffs, has anything approaching the whole picture.

Just a gorgeously bleak and cynical book. show less

You go to work and try to get stuff done and someone screws up and now you have to fix it.

This isn't the first Higgins book to read; that's probably The Friends of Eddie Coyle. But it may be the best of the ones I've read so far. There are some monologues that go on a bit too long, but the scenes with Cogan are perfect--pitch perfect. The whole mechanism of the plot is something I've never seen in any other crime novel. The scene with Cogan and Frankie in the bar is worth the whole book. show more There's also a great recording of this on Audible. It's probably the most obscene thing I've ever read, but how often do you finish a book and genuinely wish it were much, much longer? I could read about Jackie Cogan for a thousand pages. And he has the best last line in American literature. show less

High-quality pulp noir. Smart, quick, dark, funny, and a little mean. Heavy on dialogue, which I enjoy when it leans toward the diatribal--which, with Higgins, is fairly often.