Been reading a lot of Boston crime novels lately so it made sense for me to finally circle back to George V. Higgins’ final work.
My journey with Higgins is an interesting one. I first read The Friends of Eddie Coyle ten years ago and while I thought it was good, I really had no idea how to appreciate. Its dialogue-heavy approach with a large heap of verisimilitude made me feel like I was reading transcripts of a conversation between gangsters and cops rather than a typical cops-and-gangsters tale.
But as I got older, I understood more of what Higgins was trying to do. I saw how effectively his famous tale was adapted for the big screen, becoming yet another beloved 70s crime movie of mine. And it led me to Cogan’s Trade, which was one of the best things I read last year. I still think about it today. The contemporary adaptation of that novel, Killing Them Softly, is far less effective in its presentation than Friends of Eddie Coyle; it felt like guys just reading dialogue off a page rather than an actual film.
Anyway, I finally got around to Higgins’ take on the Whitey Bulger saga with this one that follows a fictionalized Bulger and Steve Flemmi, the two famous south Boston gangsters who informed for the FBI on the side. It’s not as taut as Cogan’s Trade but almost as fun, exploring the same theme in Higgins’ work about everyone coming from the same muck but only some being able to get ahead instead of others.
Funny and clever, this was a great capper to Higgins’ legendary career.