The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins (1970): Words Like Bullets Bark

With The Friends of Eddie Coyle, his debut crime novel, George V. Higgins offers up a  singularly stunning work of gritty mean-street realism. As a former Massachusetts Assistant U.S. Attorney, his grasp and conveyance of the criminal underworld and its petty denizens - Eddie and friends, of course - is complete. His style rings crystal clear and true, especially in his intuitive understanding of how these men - and some women - speak to one another. Language is a weapon to be carefully discharged with precision after locating one's target, product, or desired outcome, and language is never to be used in an obvious or specific manner - plausible deniability is at the forefront of the speakers' minds. It's all feints and parries and subtexts and diversion. These guys never say what they mean; it is what they don't say that they mean. Fascinating.

If this sounds a tad confusing I can assure you it can be because it took me some months to wend my way through the novel's peculiarities: characters introduced unnamed, passages of dialogue that go seemingly unattributed, and everything the criminals say but don't exactly mean. And cops! Cops who talk like crooks, or not exactly like crooks so you should know they're cops even though Higgins doesn't tell you at first. I can even get lost in discussions over money and guns and cars, none of which I know very well. Oh well: these challenges reward careful reading and of course rereading. An essential crime novel.

 

52 Pick-Up by Elmore Leonard (1974): Girl on Film

52 Pick-Up is only the second Elmore Leonard novel I've ever read but that will soon change (I recently acquired two other Avon '80s paperbacks, Split Images and La Brava). Long heralded as America's greatest living crime writer, Leonard writes the kinds of books that make other crime writers jealous. He makes it look effortless, a cool breeze of criminality with a black humor tang and a clockwork execution. Taut and believable dialogue spoken by characters depicted with such realism you can nearly feel them breathing down the back of your neck; suspense and action depicted with a bare-boned practicality that avoids overwrought dramatics; characters who, good, bad or in between, always surprise, revealing depths of fortitude and resourcefulness to get themselves out of serious deep shit. Also, 52 Pick-Up is an early example of snuff film in pop fiction, far as I can tell.

Detroit businessman Harry Mitchell has had only one affair during his 22-year marriage. Unfortunately, someone caught the indiscretion on film and wants $100,000 to keep it a secret. If Harry doesn't pay, the new price will be his life. But the hoods picked the wrong pigeon. Harry doesn't get mad--he gets even.

The Big Fix by Roger L. Simon (1973): Playing Clue Solitaire

The '60s are over, and unlikely private detective Moses Wine knows it. He's a Jewish divorced father of two young sons who likes to get high and tries to forget those radical days, because in '70s California, that could get you dead. Or worse - not voted into office. Then Lila Shea, the former lover Wine hasn't seen in half a decade, turns up at his door asking him for help with the the presidential campaign of Senator Miles Hawthorne. The self-exiled Abbie Hoffman-esque Howard Eppis has been endorsing the campaign with a series of flyers linking him to Mao and Lenin - positively of course - and the campaign calls on Wine to track him down and get Eppis to stop. Hawthorne might be progressive, but he's not crazy. So the wonderfully named private dick Wine hits the scorching streets of East L.A. looking for answers... and soon, for who killed Lila Shea.

Roger L. Simon has written several novels with Wine over the years in which his detective seems to be mapping out a chart of contemporary history. I spent months looking for a copy of The Big Fix in bookstores and had no luck till I was browsing in a Hollywood bookstore. I wasn't blown away by The Big Fix or anything, found it good in places and confusing in others; even, at times, unbelievably violent, in the sense that characters seemed more brutal than I found credible. If anything, I recommend the delightful 1978 film version with Richard Dreyfuss, who's perfectly cast as Wine, trying to hang onto ideals long since forgotten by everybody but him, it seems (too bad he didn't play the character again). It cuts down on some of the book's more outre plot (satanic cults) and captures a laid-back LA of the time filled with uptight political wranglers, as well as Wine's tough-comic-cynical nature and his concerns for the impact his odd lifestyle will have on his sons. I've been digging on LA noir lately so if that's your thing too, you should see if The Big Fix will fix you right.