The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
"This life's hard, but it's harder if you're stupid."Don't trust cops. Don't trust crooked cops especially. In his defense Serpico wasn't released yet. Maybe he didn't know any better? Don't be a sap, Mariel! There's no excuse. Eddie Coyle, known to frenemies as Eddie Fingers, is too fucking stupid to walk the streets a free man. George V. Higgins's The Friends of Eddie Coyle is watching someone get stabbed in the back that should never have been turned in the first place by all of the low life's that Boston had to offer. Did you know that Boston had criminals before Ben Affleck was around starring in blockbusters? Hard to believe. Don't be gullible, Mariel! Look what happened to Eddie!Hey, maybe prison won't be so bad. If you flush the tank of your toilet enough times the water will be hot enough to cook those cup of soup things. It's just like that scene in Goodfellas when Paul Sorvino slices those pieces of garlic so perfectly. Cook the meat (don't ask me where you'll get meat) with a frayed extension cord. A fire can easily be started by sticking a pencil in an electrical socket. (The meanest thing anyone has ever told me was when I was eleven. My sister's then boyfriend told me that I would grow up to be Marge's sister on The Simpsons. "I would never like Macguyver!" I AM Macguyver, you a-hole!) You could do that standing on your head! Of course, if there are sidewalk sharks then there are sharks in the big tank too. My mom thought she made friends when she went to jail. She told it like it was Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail. "I'm Madea!" "You are not Madea," I said. "I don't get no piece?" She helped another inmate carry their tote. It was very sweet sounding. I'm sure they were all very friendly. Hey, my mom did tell me "YOU wouldn't make friends in rehab, Mariel." Only I wouldn't make friends in rehab. No one likes me! So it is possible that Eddie could make friends in jail. Maybe I'm just cynical after reading The Friends of Eddie Coyle because the hard bitten criminals he already knew weren't such nice guys. Everywhere I look there are snakes looking to turn you in for something. Maybe one of those stupid statutes they have in Florida. I have showered naked in Florida. If I had friends and an open door policy I could be in some big trouble.The crooked cop is named Dave Foley. Because I am not stupid my favorite Kid in the Hall is Bruce. Other people I know may not be so lucky... Don't be stupid! Don't trust people with names like Little John or Big James either. Not that those people are in this book either. But you never know if someone will allow themselves to be referred to by such names. I refused my sister to call her baby Mariel because I didn't want to become Big Mariel. With good reason! Sure, they thought I was a heartless bitch. No one likes me and I don't know why. (Big James and Little John had a great thing going. They get away with everything by blaming each other. Funny, it has put a crimp in their friendship. But that's WHY they get away with everything! These are not people in this book. I won't tell you any more because someone might steal my idea for a reality tv show... You can't trust people these days...) Jackie Brown is a very '70s criminal name, isn't it? What has Eddie been doing with his time, other than toying with buying a color teevee for his lady? (She wouldn't appreciate it. Eddie can't do ANYTHING right.) Hasn't he seen Quentin Tarantino's film that came out decades later? Sheeeesh. What an idiot.I pretty much just wanted to say that Eddie is so stupid that it is hard to feel sorry for him when he gets screwed over so badly by his so-called element. Peter Yates made a film version in 1973 starring Robert Mitchum as Eddie. I can't believe I haven't seen this. (I like Robert Mitchum when he's not getting sand in his ass crack.) Former friends of mine claim that I have seen every movie ever made. This is a lie! (That's one reason why I am not friends with them anymore. They went around spreading lies about me like that I am some kind of pale freak that stays inside all day reading or watching movies and showering in the nude.) The 1970s is still a sort of blind spot for me. I wonder if the movie might be just a bit better. Don't get me wrong (stop putting words in my mouth!), this is a great book. But I think Eddie would benefit if you could SEE how the wheels don't turn in his head. Watch the time between what people say and how he takes for granted that everyone is not just like him i.e. trying to beat a prison rap by trying to find someone else to turn in. How a snake can't slither fast enough in a snake pit, you know? The best thing about the book is watching the double faces on the slick words that comes out of everyone but Eddie's mouths. Eddie's mouth is lies that he is too stupid not to believe himself."Don't take it so hard. Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes every day.""It's hard to notice, though," Clark said."It is," the prosecutor said, "it certainly is."I like how Higgins wrote about people by what they looked like. The stocky guy. They could be train car mustaches and tip toeing stripes hauling their own ball and chains behind them until they can't move lightly enough. I do find it really hard to accept how hard it is not to notice, too. Watch your back. Great book. The criminal world is faces just like that and if you forget what you're seeing is a mask that serves the underneath... Well, you'll probably end up like Eddie, or dead, anyway. Not that he wouldn't have done the exact same thing. I didn't forget what he was like, either.
Looking at this website, or my reviews on goodreads.com, you’d be correct in thinking The Friends of Eddie Coyle isn’t something I’d normally read. In fact my wife is to blame responsible.She grew up in South Boston, so we were curious about an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s (@noreseravations) Travel Channel show “No Reservations” that took place in Boston. The episode focused on the tougher, rougher side of Boston, and Bourdain talked about his obsession: The Friends of Eddie Coyle. My wife, being a fan of crime novels, decided to pick it up.Sorry, Anthony, but she wasn’t a fan. As she put it, “I like crime-solving novels, not novels that are just about criminals.” When she put it down, I picked it up. It is less than 200 pages, so I figure I’d give it a read. I liked it, but I can see why she didn’t.Originally written in 1970 (and later turned into a movie), Coyle is about criminals, almost exclusively. Mostly small-time crooks hustling to survive. Eddie Coyle is a gun runner who is facing sentencing in a few weeks. While still living a life of crime, Eddie is also talking to the cops, deciding who to rat out in exchange for his freedom. See, Eddie doesn’t have any friends. He’s surrounded by criminals, each doing the same calculus that Eddie is doing. It’s a rough, gritty world.What struck me most about the novel is that it’s written nearly entirely using dialog. Each chapter is basically a conversation between crooks or a crook and a cop. But author George V. Higgins isn’t always immediately clear as to who is having the conversation. As one might expect in a novel about gangsters, Higgins uses nicknames. But they are not the outlandish things you might expect–no “Jimmy the Squid” or something like that here. Instead, for example, when three criminals are working together, the one who talks is simply referred to as “the spokesman,” and another criminal is sometimes referred to as “the stout one.” Higgins uses this technique to slowly reveal the Venn diagrams that make up the Boston underworld. As the novel progresses, the overlapping plans and people become clearer, leading up to one heckuva climax. But it’s not very user friendly. There were a couple of times I had to go back and re-read a couple passages to confirm my suspicions about who was who. My wife was flat out not a fan of this technique.I can see why Bourdain might obsess over it. There is a lot of subtlety at play in Coyle that would reward re-reading. I didn’t come away with a new obsession, but I liked it. As a reader, I was engaged, and as a writer, it serves as a fantastic model of what dialog can do not only to advance the plot, but also reveal character. Check it out if you’d like to try something different too.
What do You think about The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (2001)?
This is pretty much as advertised: a crime masterpiece. The dialogue, including the patter and verbiage, is like a well written stage play. There is little action (stage direction, if you will) but a lot of talking though it is never boring and always engaging. Really, in the end, this is a tale of unforced exposition surrounded (or, rather) interrupted by necessary plotting. This is characters talking about their lives and what goes on in-between just so happens to be criminal activity. Highly recommended by more than just me.
—William Johnson
The strength of this brilliant crime novel lies in the dialog, which constitutes about eighty percent of the book. George V. Higgins had an excellent ear and captures perfectly the voices of all of the characters who populate the book. I really have no idea what a group of typical run-of-the-mill criminals would actually sound like, but this is about the most realistic sounding group of crooks--and cops--that I've ever encountered in a novel.At the center of the book is a small-time Boston criminal named Eddie Coyle, and the conceit of the book is that Eddie really doesn't have any friends. He has guys that he hangs out with and guys that he works with, and cops that he negotiates with, but none of them really gives a good goddamn about Eddie and anyone of them would sell him out for a tired dime.Of course Eddie's not above dealing his "friends" either. He's in a real jam, having been convicted of driving a truck filled with stolen booze and he's looking at a long stretch in the pen. Eddie's convinced that he really can't do the time and he's looking to make a trade with the authorities that will get him off the hook.Eddie's been supplying guns to a group of bank robbers. Perhaps he could give up the guy who's supplying him with the guns; perhaps he could give up the robbers themselves, but would either or both be enough to get the prosecutor to back off?Clearly there's no honor among thieves, or among the cops, for that matter. These guys are all working stiffs, just trying to get through the day, irrespective of which side of the law they happen to reside on. There are no good guys and no bad guys in this tale; you find yourself rooting for Eddie simply because you sympathize with the poor mope and not because he embodies any recognizable virtues.Again, it's the dialog that makes this book a classic. It has the ring of authenticity and listening to these guys scheme, negotiate, plead and promise becomes almost an intimate experience. It's a book that no fan of the crime genre should miss.
—James Thane
Excellent, really outstanding. Consists almost entirely of dialogue. You have to get used to the slang (I imagine in the 70s this would have been near impossible to read for most Dutch readers; I suspect we're a little more used to underworld slang nowadays, partly because of books like this and the films they influenced, probably). And you have to work out who's who and what they are doing. E.g. in one particular scene where two men meet up in the street, it takes a few pages before you work out that one is a small time crook and the other a cop who's using him as a fink. But then if you think about it, that's not much different from how it happens in a film: all you get is what you see and hear, and you have to work out the relationships for yourself.Of course a lot of skill goes into writing situations and dialogue that make it possible for the reader (or viewer) to work this out. And Higgins is incredibly good at this.But most of all, he's incredibly good at writing very realistic seeming dialogue, with lots of repetition (people often say the same thing three or four times over – like in real life) without ever losing flow.And he presents a fascinating picture of lowlife crime. Most fascinating of all is how many criminals (in this book) work together with the police in some way, trying to make the police work for them – and failing, or not, as the case may be. And also how they're all only looking out for themselves. Higgin's view on this is utterly, but utterly unsentimental. (Elmore Leonard, in contrast, seems like a maudlin purveyor of Disney-type crime stories.)I don't know if Higgins had any predecessors, but I can't help feel he's been enormously influential in the way novelists and screenwriters have written about crime in the decades after he started publishing.Or are there more (and earlier) authors like this?
—Frank
