George V. Higgins: THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, THE DIGGER'S
GAME, THE RAT ON FIRE
I reread COYLE recently and I think that is a legitimate
masterpiece, one of the true classics of the hb genre. I'm
not that enthusiastic about the other two, though. COYLE is
very literary and structurally/formalistically severe:
Higgins is often compared to Leonard, and there's some truth
in that, but I think a far better comparison here is Robert
Stone, whose DOG SOLDIERS also self-consciously used genre
tropes for 'high literary' ends.
Read more Higgins and this becomes clearer, I think. DIGGER'S
is sort of a more naturalistic take, more of an attempt to
tell a straightforward crime story using his approach. (I
would argue COYLE really isn't a straightforward crime
story.) I found a lot of it pretty dull, actually: Higgins
monologs work best when they're part of an overarching
vision. By themselves they tend to drone. RAT is somewhat
better, but feels a little tired to me, too -- it doesn't
have the freshness of COYLE.
JDM -- THE DECEIVERS, BORDER TOWN GIRL
Well, DECEIVERS is the usual soap opera, I'd avoid it myself.
BORDER is much more interesting: it's two novellas. The first
one, the title story, has some of JDM's very real strengths
(a fine villain and a real primal sense of evil) along with
some of his weaknesses (relatively less good at portraying
'good', with a bunch of interchangeable cops). With all of
it's flaws it's still worth a look. The second one,
"Linda", is I think one of the best things JDM ever wrote,
and one of his few really good non-Travis Mcgee works. It
helps that the protagonist isn't the usual philosophical
middle class drone (he's much more limited): there's a
distance here that I think helped. It's also a lot firmer
structurally than a lot of his stories, with more of a
willingness to accept the downbeat ending that many of his
writings signal, but end up avoiding. I think the ending
should be even darker, and I'll never really be enthusiastic
about this mileau (man in the grey flannel suit stuff), but
it is a very good piece.
Charles Williams -- I've currently been reading/rereading
whatever I can find from this guy, which is very limited.
Outside of the recent Hard Case reprint, there's THE HOT
SPOT, SCORPION REEF, DEAD CALM, and THE SAILCLOTH SHROUD.
Fantastic writer, shamefully neglected.
doug
Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 08 Apr 2006 EDT