Trust

by George V. Higgins

Sphere 1991 reprint edition paperback. vg++ condition. In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Genres: Fiction, Crime, 20th Century

235 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

George Vincent Higgins was a United States author, lawyer, newspaper columnist, and college professor. He is best known for his bestselling crime novels.

Reviews

[WJEP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am barely dishonest enough to keep up with Higgins. It took me a while to realize that Earl is a natural-born liar and always scheming. There are many scenes where Higgins gives step-by-step descriptions of one of Earl's schemes, but you can't figure out what he's up to till the end.

Chapter 11 starts with a man driving a fifty-five Crown Victoria into the lot. Earl spends the rest of the chapter (about one-eighth of the book) pulling off a staggering used-car swindle. Later that day, Earl launches a shocking caper by going into a bar and ordering a pint of "John Courage." Earl's brother knows what to do if you have a run-in with Earl:

"your best bet’s to call the cops. I don’t insure anyone against Earl. I don’t trust the bastard myself."

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best of the later Higgins I've read. The plot unfolds almost subliminally through conversation that's so pleasurable to read, you may miss the machinations entirely. But it all snaps together in the final few pages (though if you're like me, you'll need a few minutes to think your way back through it all and realize, "Ah, so that's what happened!")

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pleasures of George V. Higgins’ crime stories aren’t found in the plotting, even though it’s always spiderwebs. They’re not found in his griminess, even though his characters do awful things that are fun to rubberneck. And it’s not found in the reveals or resolutions, because they are often beside the point. What Higgins does so effectively, maybe as effectively as anyone who ever wrote knockround guys, is to show us the distance from us to people doing bad things is much closer than we’d ever like to admit. In Trust, our man is Earle Beale, a former basketball star with a criminal past who just can’t shake the gambler’s disease of thinking getting ahead will require only one more bet. And the more Beale extends himself, because gamblers always do, the more he gets sucked into a world where his small-stakes thinking pulls him upward into one where systemic corruption rules, and its inhabitants have no time for his meddling. From a lens of pure enjoyment, Higgins writes as good of dialogue as anyone ever has. Words that not only capture an underworld patois, but that create pockets of vital white space where only careful attention will find the skeleton key to what his characters feel, mean, and intend to do.

[Sidewalk Doctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this as anyone's first Higgins book (instead try Friends of Eddie Coyle, Cogan's Trade, or Digger's Game). While not really "difficult" to read, it's not as fun easy to read as say Elmore Leonard, or Higgins' earlier work (see above), and I found myself getting a bit bogged down at times, but looking back on it, I'm glad I persevered.
It seems Higgins goal here (and he is almost successful) is writing a compelling crime novel with no real action, entirely based on conversations between morally ambiguous characters.
On a side note, not since the "Flitcraft Parable" in Maltese Falcon have I seen a crime author spend as much time on a subplot completely unrelated to the main story as when Earl Beale, the central character, craftily hustles a customer (and his boss) to provide an affordable car for a young girl and her mother.
An odd book, but not without its rewards.

[Hobart Mariner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another comedy about moronic New England crooks, this one centering around a former college basketball star Earl Beale, busted for gambling and sent to prison. His life after prison involves selling used cars and assisting his escort girlfriend. Really the power of the book is in seeing what a monumental piece of shit and idiot Earl is, showcased during a passage when his girlfriend leaves him alone on Thanksgiving. You also see some great mechanics of fraud in the car sales business, not just scamming customers (which, of course) but also how the salesmen can defraud the dealership. Not much action, not even the minimal sort displayed in Eddie Coyle, Digger's Game, Cogan's Trade, or Patriot Game. Some boring-ish politician stuff about a Vermont Democrat screwing over a progressive, la plus ca change. The only book I've read to take place, partially, in South Burlington.

[Jorn Barger · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seems really inconsiderate toward his readers to bury the plotline under this much irrelevant smalltalk. If all those minor characters were a little more interesting, I might not mind, but instead it feels really padded, like he can rattle off any quantity he needs without any special thought. Everybody's detailed humdrum procedures are explained at length, but there's no payoff. And as you approach the end, it's really annoying to have to wade thru so many distractions trying to piece together the (unsurprising) plot. (Someone who's read it carefully needs to post a plot summary with spoilers to Wikipedia, please.)

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly sure this is a re-read, but it’s been a while.

This is a book about the unspoken assumptions between people, and a liar (just one, really) who tries to play them. Other people push at the assumptions, the trust, but only one really violates them. And then that person gets all those other people in trouble.

Nicely told… action and drama, less intentionally obtuse than some Higgins. Plenty of fine dialogue. Crime-y, but with a wider lens than EDDIE COYLE. And a fast read, although I know I’m missing a few key points from the speed. A smarter reader than me would know why everything in this book happened, but they might not enjoy it as much.

[Freddie the Know-it-all · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shhh

Since I'm not allowed to say what I think without some sissy reporting me and getting my review deleted, I'll give you people what you seem to want to hear:

It's a darkly comic, taut, rollicking romp through rollercoaster rides for book junkies on sterioids.

It's not a Dangerous Game of Cat-and-Mouse, but at the same time it's not a Cushy Game of Hamster-and-Gerbil either.

At the end, the profagonist gives the reader a blistering lesson in gripping harbingers.

[Jerstyn Morehay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Higgins moves a few points up in the social scale to disclose scandal, blackmail, and malfeasance surrounding the New England political scene during the waning days of the Lyndon Johnson administration, but not enough differentiation between the multiple characters to make you care. Ostensibly follows a young screw-up on his release from jail and his various get-rich schemes, but by the end you'll have even less idea as to his motivation unless it's simply to make mischief.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

A promising plot setup and decent characters are ultimately ruined by chapters (we're talking ENTIRE chapters) of pointless, banal dialogue scenes. Seriously, most of the text should be straight up cut out. I'd heard Higgins got indulgent and self-parodic in his later works with his dialogue heavy prose, and that proved to be all too true here. I could not finish it. Unreadable.

[Daniel Polansky]

A shiftless ex-con gets over-clever trying to pay back a favor to the mob. It gets kind of into the weeds on the specifics of selling used cars but the final act is top notch.

[Will Henson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately Trust didn't really work for me. As a Higgins' fanatic, this makes me think the fault lies with me and not the author. But I simply could not follow the plot and was completely lost by the end. This was the first time reading one of Higgins' works that I felt like he was being deliberately obtuse, and not simply allowing the organic complexity inherent in his style to emerge on its own. That said, I'm going to give it another shot in the future and perhaps a second reading will change my opinion.

[Aaron Martz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another unusually structured book by George V. Higgins, this one about a crooked used car dealer named Earl Beale. Beale not only cons customers into buying cars that'll barely make it home, but indulges in blackmailing politicians and committing fraud against his own brother, not to mention grand theft auto. As usual with Higgins, the book is ninety percent dialogue to the extent to which key plot points must be extracted from what is said. You get used to it after reading a few of Higgins's books, and you'll come to relish the rhapsodic, near operatic flow of the language. This time around his scumbag characters include used car dealers, prostitutes, politicians, closeted homosexuals, motel owners, janitors, and bartenders, each sounding wholly authentic. You'll never look at a used car the same way again.

[False · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm currently reading Victories and realized that several of the characters in Trust are making a new appearance in a different storyline that touches on "Trust." The usual Higgins style with more dialogue than plot, but who needs plot when the characters tell the story so well. Higgins can ring pathos from life's losers, gangsters, con artists, it's rich...he covers the spectrum of humanity, and he had sharp eyes. I've added the images for this first edition volume. I keep finding a lack of them with Higgins' work, and that makes me sad. People still need to be reading him. They'll find life's lessons in his books.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read some of Higgins years ago, before he died, and picked this one up for a buck from a shelf in front of Zingg records. Vintage dialogue, but the trouble is that all the characters talk at length in the same wise guy idiom. The characters were rather predictable, though the prostitute toughness was refreshing. I will read more Higgins. As overdrawn as his characters are their world is still one that fascinates me.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had not read a George V Higgins book for a number of years, and it took me a little while to get into his style and rhythms, but, as usual, the mix of politics and sleaze drew me in and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I do not think it is one of his best, the main plot being a bit too thin, but he is a genuine storyteller with a unique style.

[Count Duckula · Rating 5 out of 5]

perhaps the perfect non-pulp crime novel ...

[Krzysz · Rating 3 out of 5]

High-quality pulp noir. Smart, quick, dark, funny, and a little mean. Heavy on dialogue, which I enjoy when it leans toward the diatribal--which, with Higgins, is fairly often.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

On this Higgins is great as on his earlier best works...recommended