The Friends of Eddie Coyle

I regard The Friends of Eddie Coyle as the best American crime novel of the 20th century. 

This noir Friends is a fast-moving slither through Boston’s underworld with its colorful cast of bank robbers and victims, cops, and informers, and, above all, Eddie “Fingers” Coyle. Facing a long prison stretch, Coyle, a small-time gunrunner, is willing to do anything, including informing on a fellow armorer, to stay on the street. 

Told largely through realistic dialogue Higgins picked up as a federal prosecutor, Friends had huge influence, including on crime-novel master Elmore Leonard. I find that the novel passes the ultimate… show more.

This is the one that started it all, although it was actually Higgins’ fifteenth attempt at getting a novel published. When we think of Boston, most of us hear the distinctive voice of the city first. (Just think of all the Hollywood actors who have tried to master the “pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd” accent.) Coyle spins most of its yarn about a low-level gangster selling stolen guns through its razor-sharp dialogue, a lesson I took to heart when writing my book. But don’t take it from me; no less an authority than Elmore Leonard called it the… show more.

Elmore Leonard—in my opinion the greatest suspense writer of our time—called Higgins’ 1970 debut “the best crime novel ever written.” Higgins, who died in 1999, wrote three other crime novels I’d place in my top twenty-five, but this slim, taut misadventure of the eponymous Boston gun runner and police snitch takes the cake. Brutal, funny, and ultimately soul-crushing—most of it delivered in the underworld patois Higgins, a onetime criminal prosecutor, made his trademark—Eddie Coyle is simply as good as it gets. P.S. Robert Mitchum is spot on as doomed Eddie and Peter Boyle is perfect as one of… show more.

An aging, low-level figure in Boston's Irish mob, Eddie Coyle is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of hijacking a truck. While he considers his options, his many friends and acquaintances consider what to do about him.

This novel is about seventy-percent dialogue, and it's all legitimately excellent and absolutely authentic. True to life, the way many people speak is annoying and imprecise – they meander, they tell stories that have nothing to do with what's going on, they forget what they were saying – but it ads a sense of realism that is extremely rare in novels.

It's a very… show more.