Great though the movie was, I can't easily imagine anyone saying that it was better than the novel. The scene in the book where Eddie dispenses fatherly advice while preparing to break the kid's fingers in the desk drawer is, in my opinion, one of the great hard-boiled scenes in fiction.
May I share a true conversation I had with an alleged killer? He was a very nice guy, by the way. He was in prison and the cops pulled him out of his cell.
Cop: (tossing horrible photos of freshly dug up but ancient corpse on the table) Well, Johnny, I guess we finally found out what happened to Gary.
Johnny: Did we?
Cop: Yeah.
Johnny: Well, what do you got for me?
Cop: Nothing but the chance to help.
Johnny: You can take me back to my cell.
Guy listening to Johnny tell the story: Did he ( the photo) look like the same guy?
Johnny: Well, it had been a while. But the tarp looked the same.
No one else has ever seen the humor in this story. But even when I first heard it I thought, "This is a George Higgins moment".
James
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 28 May 2009 EDT