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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
Really naturalistic dialog. Obtrusively so.
If the one pole of exposition is a husband and wife reciting "as you know, our relationship to one another is..." this one is pages and pages of tangential, slangy conversations between people with long histories.
So you end up with stuff like the first chapter, where three people are talking over one another, with constant reference to a fourth guy named Squirrel, who as you find out about two chapters later is the first guy. Except the narrator always refers to him as 'Amato', and none of the other two react to the one guy calling the other by a completely different name.
Anyway, it was a pain to read through, but less so than anything Faulkner ever wrote, and definitely the most like how people actually speak to each other. With all the unexplained references in every single conversation (and the book is like literally 90% dialog) I honestly can't hold back the feeling that these characters are all part of several books by the guy, even though they can't be, since most of them end up dead by the end.
Other big problem: even Anton Chirgurgh had to put in the legwork to figure out where the money was. We leave Cogan in one chapter, and he's stated that he has no reason not to believe that it was Markie, but no reason not to believe it was someone else setting Markie up, and for that matter no reason to believe Markie wasn't making it look like he was framed to get out of trouble. Then next time Cogan comes into the story he knows about everyone and everything. Also, they never really mention Russel after a certain point, or why no one seems to be sweating him getting away with knocking over a mob game when it's considered a big enough outrage everyone else involved ends up dead, a guy everyone knows is innocent gets killed because it sends a better message, and people who aren't working hard *enough* to track down the real culprits end up thrown to the wolves for expediency's sake.
Also I was psyched to learn that the Dropkick Murphys were named for "Dr. P.K. Murphy" 's sanatorium, but then I see on wikipedia that the guy's name was John, and he picked up the nickname as a pro wrestler. Why'd he change the guy's initials to make it look like that was where the name came from? Apparently everyone in Boston knew all about him, so what was the point?
If the one pole of exposition is a husband and wife reciting "as you know, our relationship to one another is..." this one is pages and pages of tangential, slangy conversations between people with long histories.
So you end up with stuff like the first chapter, where three people are talking over one another, with constant reference to a fourth guy named Squirrel, who as you find out about two chapters later is the first guy. Except the narrator always refers to him as 'Amato', and none of the other two react to the one guy calling the other by a completely different name.
Anyway, it was a pain to read through, but less so than anything Faulkner ever wrote, and definitely the most like how people actually speak to each other. With all the unexplained references in every single conversation (and the book is like literally 90% dialog) I honestly can't hold back the feeling that these characters are all part of several books by the guy, even though they can't be, since most of them end up dead by the end.
Other big problem: even Anton Chirgurgh had to put in the legwork to figure out where the money was. We leave Cogan in one chapter, and he's stated that he has no reason not to believe that it was Markie, but no reason not to believe it was someone else setting Markie up, and for that matter no reason to believe Markie wasn't making it look like he was framed to get out of trouble. Then next time Cogan comes into the story he knows about everyone and everything. Also, they never really mention Russel after a certain point, or why no one seems to be sweating him getting away with knocking over a mob game when it's considered a big enough outrage everyone else involved ends up dead, a guy everyone knows is innocent gets killed because it sends a better message, and people who aren't working hard *enough* to track down the real culprits end up thrown to the wolves for expediency's sake.
Also I was psyched to learn that the Dropkick Murphys were named for "Dr. P.K. Murphy" 's sanatorium, but then I see on wikipedia that the guy's name was John, and he picked up the nickname as a pro wrestler. Why'd he change the guy's initials to make it look like that was where the name came from? Apparently everyone in Boston knew all about him, so what was the point?
This was a hard book to read, consisting almost entirely of dialogue. Like 98%. Higgins is great at capturing the voices of the mid-70s criminals, but there's too much digression and not enough plot movement. Too bad considering how much I liked his earlier book, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
Strangely (?) enough, the film adaptations of the two books follow suit. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a great hidden gem starring Robert Mitchum. Cogan's Trade came to screens as Killing Them Softly, starring Brad Pitt, and it's pretty slow.
Strangely (?) enough, the film adaptations of the two books follow suit. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a great hidden gem starring Robert Mitchum. Cogan's Trade came to screens as Killing Them Softly, starring Brad Pitt, and it's pretty slow.
His mastery of dialogue is amazing. Crime from the criminals' mindset.
Many years ago I read Higgins's most famous novel, [b:The Friends of Eddie Coyle|82121|The Friends of Eddie Coyle|George V. Higgins|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1171012318s/82121.jpg|79293], and didn't get what all the fuss what about. With many hundreds of books under my belt since then, including this one, I now have a much better sense of why Higgins is so revered among crime fiction cognoscenti. Simply put, it's his ear for the dialogue and mores of the criminal world.
The plot is certainly nothing remarkable -- some small time hoods scheme to knock over an after-hours card game and put the blame on the guy running the game. This causes all the other after-hours card games to shut down, and the mob sends fixer Jackie Cogan in to clean things up. A few complications ensue, but the book is not about the plotting, it's about the telling of the story. And that's done almost entirely through dialogue.
But not just any dialogue -- these aren't conventional fictional conversations with begins, middles, and ends. In many cases, the reader is dropped into a conversation that's already begun, and there can be long passages where the topic of discussion is somewhat opaque, until one works it out from context. It's kind of an amazingly improbably blend of the highly realistic with the highly stylized. One would be hard-pressed to come away from this (and other) Higgins books not believing that Quentin Tarantino has read and absorbed them all.
Readers who like their crime to be plot-driven will probably find this story kind of frustrating, given how meandering it is. It's also pretty clear from the get-go what's going to happen and when, so those who need their crime stories to be full of suspense will be similarly frustrated. But if you're looking for a master class in creating character through dialogue, this is it! Now I just have to go back and read The Friends of Eddie Coyle!
The plot is certainly nothing remarkable -- some small time hoods scheme to knock over an after-hours card game and put the blame on the guy running the game. This causes all the other after-hours card games to shut down, and the mob sends fixer Jackie Cogan in to clean things up. A few complications ensue, but the book is not about the plotting, it's about the telling of the story. And that's done almost entirely through dialogue.
But not just any dialogue -- these aren't conventional fictional conversations with begins, middles, and ends. In many cases, the reader is dropped into a conversation that's already begun, and there can be long passages where the topic of discussion is somewhat opaque, until one works it out from context. It's kind of an amazingly improbably blend of the highly realistic with the highly stylized. One would be hard-pressed to come away from this (and other) Higgins books not believing that Quentin Tarantino has read and absorbed them all.
Readers who like their crime to be plot-driven will probably find this story kind of frustrating, given how meandering it is. It's also pretty clear from the get-go what's going to happen and when, so those who need their crime stories to be full of suspense will be similarly frustrated. But if you're looking for a master class in creating character through dialogue, this is it! Now I just have to go back and read The Friends of Eddie Coyle!
Almost entirely built around lengthy scenes of dialogue, with the action frequently, although not always, happening off-camera as it were. This reads a little like a David Mammet play in novel form, but without the same volume of coarse language.
An obliquely plotted crime novel with well-observed details and crackling dialogue. The ability for so many people to say so little while saying so much is amazing.