The Friends Of Eddie Coyle

An introduction and appreciation of the gritty 1973 movie set in Boston starring Robert Mitchum from Turner Classic Movies.  Watch the clip, watch the movie.  And here's a link to NY Times critic AO Scott on the film.  Eddie Coyle was the first novel of George V Higgins to be published, and he went on to write twenty more over the following two decades before dying in 1999.  THC has read them all.

THC has written on the book and movie before in The Workingman's Eddie Coyle and Missing George V Higgins, along with his magnum opus on Higgins and his work, Eddie Coyle's Friend, which includes a description of the author's technique:

A Higgins novel relies on dialogue in which the characters converse about what had happened, or was about to happen, or about things that had nothing to do with what had or was going to happen, though sometimes it would dawn on you towards the end of the book that that thing, you know, which the guy talked about way back that didn't seem to have anything to do with the story, did.  

That technique found its most exquisite execution in Bomber's Law:

Nominally, Bomber's Law is about Detective Sergeant Brennan of the Massachusetts State Police, who is following a mob enforcer, Short Joey Mossi, in an attempt to build a case against him.  After tailing Mossi fruitlessly for years, Brennan is saddled by his boss, Brian Dennison, with a new partner, Harry Dell'Appa, an idealistic and impatient young state cop, who is puzzled why Brennan and Dennison's predecessor, the retired and now very dead Bomber Lawrence, have failed to get the goods on Short Joey after all these years.  Most of the novel, which is 95% dialogue, consists of Brennan, Dell'Appa and Dennison telling each other lengthy, and occasionally deliberately distracting, yarns in the course of which we learn a lot about Short Joey and his younger, mentally disabled brother, and eventually the secret of Bomber's Law along with embarking upon many entertaining excursions which have nothing to do with the plot, that is, if there is, in fact, a plot.  The story telling is wonderful but dazzlingly complex often requiring the reader to double back and make sure they understand just whom the speaker is referring to or who is actually speaking.  

Missing George V Higgins

I ran across this clip today.  The expression has been credited to many people but its real source is George V Higgins' first published novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

I've written before of my love for the work of Higgins. (A post I spent more time on, including numerous rewrites, than anything else on THC).  He passed in 1999 and I still miss the comforting delivery of his annual novel, a rhythm I could rely upon for two decades.

As a reminder of his talent here is a recent article from CrimeReads.  An excerpt:

The Friends of Eddie Coyle may not have been the first crime novel set in Boston, but it’s the first one that matters. George V. Higgins couldn’t have known he was launching an entirely new subgenre when his fifteenth attempt at writing a debut novel was accepted for publication in 1970, but Coyle’s DNA is imprinted on everything that followed, from Robert B. Parker’s Spenser to Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro to the glut of Boston-based crime movies starring marble-mouthed actors pronouncing “car keys” like “khakis.”

Enjoy this scene from Eddie Coyle with Robert Mitchum playing the title role.  The actor with Mitchum below, and in the clip at top, is Steven Keats who played thugs or troubled characters in many movies during the 1970s and 80s.