Just this evening I got a nice new "40th anniversary" trade paperback
edition of "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", with an introduction by Dennis
Lehane. I've never read Higgins and I'm looking forward to it.
I've been going through the works of Thomas Perry at a pretty rapid clip
since the very positive NY Times review of his most recent novel a few weeks
ago. The best I've read so far might be the recent "Fidelity", whose 2 main
characters are a PI's widow and a hit man. Perry's first novel "The
Butcher's Boy", which won an Edgar, also featured alternating segments about
a female novice investigator and a contract killer, oddly enough. A lot of
his books have female viewpoint characters; Perry seems to me to do the
female characters pretty well. I'd be interested in the opinions of women
readers on this point. I don't think I've seen Perry mentioned much on this
list but it seems to me that his work qualifies.
Stephen Burridge
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 7:00 PM, tomarmstrongmusic <
tom@tomarmstrongmusic.com> wrote:
> a buddy of mine finally wore me down and got me to reading Charles Bukowski
> and John Fante, both of whom I had resisted for a long long time and neither
> of whom have much of anything to do with this list. so I have been more
> immersed in that and haven't been posting.
>
> but I did recently read George V. Higgins first two books, "Eddie Coyle"
> and "Digger's Game" and I liked them both. I almost like "Digger" better
> than "Coyle" which is probably an unpopular opinion but so what. I loved
> Digger's ambiguous ending. I found the 'all dialog, all the time' style
> kind of exhausting but they were good reads. kind of like more gangland
> versions of Richard Price, in the way violence flows directly from
> character. what can you do with a guy like the Greek? I plan to read
> "Cogan's trade" when I find it, and then I think I'll be sorta done with
> Higgins for a while.
>
> and I picked up the first three Factory novels by Derek Raymond, ballantine
> trade pb copies from the 80s. so I'll be tackling those sometime soon.
>
> Tom Armstrong
>
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Jack Bludis <buildsnburns@...> wrote:
> >
> > Can anyone explain the slow and now nearly rapid decline of Rara-Avis. It
> can't just be blamed on the summer, can it?
> >
> > Maybe we need a good old, what is noir what is hardboiled conflict to
> liven things up.
> >
> > Jack Bludis
> >
> > http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JackBludis
> >
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
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