The Digger's Game

by George V. Higgins

Jerry "Digger" Doherty is an ex-con and proprietor of a workingman's Boston bar, who supplements his income with the occasional "odd job," like stealing live checks and picking up hot goods. His brother’s a priest, his wife’s a nag, and he’s got a deadly appetite for martinis and gambling. But when the Digger looses eighteen grand in borrowed money on a trip to Vegas, he quickly finds himself in the sights of mob loneshark “the Greek,” who will have to make the Digger pay up one way or another. Luckily—if you call it luck—the Digger has been let in on a little job that can turn his gambling debt into a profit, as long as he can pull it off without getting killed.

Genres: Crime, Fiction, Noir, Mystery, 20th Century, Novels, Mystery Thriller

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 1973

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

[Rex Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's just astounding what Higgins can do with dialogue, making up somewhere around 97% or more of the words in this one. Even so, it does not feel like a stage play. You truly feel the selfish, uncaring, desperate, and dirty world of small-time crooks who aim for one thing and more often than not generate a miserable something else. Guilt is universal, punishment is random, and it doesn't matter if your experience comes to an end because the pleasure of it is permanent.

[WJEP · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked Digger Doherty much more than Eddie Coyle. In Higgins' books you learn about the characters from their conversations. Eddie was a ratfink and he chose his words accordingly. The Digger is a jamoke. He is a loudmouth mick and is humorously honest about his jamokeness.

The Digger went on a Vegas junket and is inna hole for eighteen + juice to a loan shark. Most of the story is Digger lying and heisting his way outa that hole. In chapter 7, Digger tells the story of what happened in Vegas and it's stomach-churning, because Digger is aware of what's happening but he still can't stop it.

"That was a great fuckin’ idea," the Digger said. "Right up there with Jack Kennedy goin’ down to Dallas, see how things’re going."

Maybe the reason this book is much less popular than The Friends of Eddie Coyle is that it can be confusing. I realized I was lost half-way into the 20-page-long Chapter 4: Who the hell is the Greek? Are Richie, Herbie, and Schabb 2 people or 3? I normally don't like books that test my reading comprehension, but it's my fault. You can't drift off in a Higgins book.

I'm glad I didn't bail-out in Chapter 4. I would have missed a chapter-length quarrel between the Digger and his wife. Chapter 5 starts with the ill-boding first sentence:

The Digger got up at eleven and asked his wife for ten dollars.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Higgins is great. He's written what amounts to a dozen scenes with primarily dialogue, and he gets character, plot, action, the whole thing. "Sweating like I did a mile and six furlongs". Higgins has great knowledge of the way things work in the world, first of the legal and other-than-legal business mechanics, and presents these (sometimes extremely complicated) mechanics so well from the level of the characters and where they are, so that it's never expositional but an aspect of the way the characters walk those avenues. For instance, the travel agency scam outlined only as part of three very different characters working together -- two criminals and a corrupt businessman front man, who ends up being the toughest of them, in a way -- and the interaction stems from character and only character, so that the intricacies of what the actual business are described as it goes along, almost offhandedly, as if you were going along with them. And the ending is so downbeat, perfectly so, like November low tide at Revere Beach

Even with the travesty surrounding the potential filming of "Friends of E. Coyle", Higgins is still mightily underrated. NYer once called him the Balzac of the Boston Underworld, and while this is a nice thing to say that gets at some of Higgins' skills, it is limiting of what he can do...for the other great ability of Higgins is his sketch of the human condition and psychology, his understanding of the business of being human, and the manner and style in which he does it, that is, presented not internally but for the most part just presenting how people talk and the subtleties of their interaction. The long scene of Digger going to ask a favor from his brother is a masterpiece, more Shakespeare than Spillane. For all that Elmore Leonard is vaunted for his underworld dialogue, he's a barney compared to Higgins

[Gary Baughn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great Higgins exploration of midlevel gangsters in Boston. It begins with a conversation that can't be beat, and then continues with one well-dialogued situation after another. Now I know why they call them "Wise-Guys," because they all think they are smarter than whomever they are working with, when in reality they are all dumber, because they all think they have the situation figured out, and they haven't, because some part of the situation is not under their control, including what the other wise-guys are thinking. Eventually they all trip over their own belief in their wisdom, but along the way it is a lot of fun pretending we are smarter than all of them, and it also is fun being in on the racket, no matter how slimy the racket might be.

[Ben Loory · Rating 2 out of 5]

all the dialogue of his other books, but somehow none of the tension.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few nice stories are told by the characters, but the overarching tale (what there is of one) is confusing and uninteresting. Just like The Friends of Eddie Coyle, it is dialog strong and plot weak, which makes for a difficult and unsatisfying read.

[Jim Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

DKF. Surprisingly it was the dialogue that other reviewers enjoyed so much that turned me off. I felt that the dialogue seemed like someone just recorded everything the characters said without applying any literary license to separate the interesting parts from the dull and mundane. I gave up at about the 15% mark and at that point nothing much had happened.

[Kern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on how much I loved both The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Cogan's Trade, I figured The Digger's Game would be another masterpiece from Higgins (especially considering it was released between the two aforementioned novels), but unfortunately I found this quite lacking. At times, the dialogue is just as punchy and entertaining, but more often it's honestly difficult to track what the characters are even talking about, and more importantly, the novel lacks the plot momentum and tension that made those other two so engrossing. Certainly won't put me off from exploring more of his work, but I've at least tempered my expectations moving forward.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Closer to 3.75 but still very good especially in terms of dialogue, which Higgins is always great at. For fans of taught dialogue and casual banter about the 1971 Boston Red Sox.

[Robert Craven · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite one to date. Slick, snappy Bostonian dialogue in this short novel, sees John 'Digger' Doherty, ex-con and bar owner who owes a loan shark, 'The Greek' a lot of cash. Digger's brother, a catholic priest won't help, so Doherty decides to try his luck in Vegas, but on the way hears of a chance to score big and sets out to do a heist of luxury fur coats.

every word, every nuance has a rhythm and is a masterclass in crime caper writing.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This staccato Southie noir has lashings of the distilled tough-guy talk for which Higgins is justifiably famous, but the narrative just never really takes off. On a family trip to London when I was a teen, I bought a discount omnibus comprising The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Cogan's Trade and The Rat on Fire to read on the plane trip home. I chose it because Norman Mailer, with whom I was besotted, was quoted on the cover as saying (about Eddie Coyle), " What I can't get over is that so good a first novel was written by the fuzz." The collection electrified me. I read all three novels back to back. Ever since, I've taken a sort of proprietary hipster's pride in Higgins as my personal discovery. I got excited about reading him again after the release (and subsequent disappearance without a ripple) of the excellent film version of Cogan's Trade, Killing Them Softly.
Not much happens in The Digger's Game. A small-time hoodlum owes money to some bad men. He pulls a caper. The bad men don't get along. That's about it. I'm not a reader to whom plot matters a great deal. I read crime fiction, when I read it, for the atmosphere. As Edmund Wilson famously put it, Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? So, I'm not sure why The Digger's Game felt like it was missing a key something. There were lines of dialogue in this novel that were so laconic that I couldn't understand what the character was saying until I'd repeated the line out loud a few times. Perhaps with further reflection, what seemed unsatisfyingly incomplete about the reading experience will be revealed as brilliantly elliptical. At any rate, I'll be back. I can't get enough of that hard-boiled ABI Paddy palaver.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elmore Leonard tends to get the lion's share of the credit when people talk about crime writers who have a way with dialogue, but, in truth, George . V. Higgins is the king. Don't get me wrong. Leonard's writing features some impressive volleys, but Higgins takes dialogue to a whole new level, making conversation the very narrative engine of his works. He's a complete original, too idiosyncratic really to even give birth to imitators, since it's pointless to try to copy him.

"The Digger's Game" follows the travails of a degenerate gambler, and his brother, a not-so-degenerate man of the cloth. The former brother digs himself a deep hole with a loan shark, can barely make his vig, and sets out to pull a robbery for insurance money.

That's the plot, in bare bones, but it doesn't do justice to the music of Higgins' writing, which, I should add, isn't for everybody. The author once said words to the effect that he wasn't a crime writer, that he did character studies, and the characters he was studying just happened to be criminals. That's certainly the case here, and the book isn't so much what it's about, as how it's about it, if that makes any kind of sense at all.

All in all, a solid book.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm predisposed to like seedy, beat-down, dialogue-heavy crime thrillers about small-time lowlifes, so Higgins is right up my alley, but he's no rote genre hack. The book is structured as a series of conversations between two or three people, with a minimum of exposition and a maximum of attention to detail to what characters' speech patterns reveal about them as people. No character is sympathetic, with the partial exception of a priest who is the main character's older brother, but each character is funny and real. You don't waste time as a reader trying to identify with anyone. You just detach yourself and take it all in, all that hilarious, profane dialogue and the darkly comic defeatist lives of small-time players on the margins of crime. I'll be reading more of him.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

Higgins writes Boston street slang better than anyone, maybe better than anyone actually speaks it. This is good, because it's authentic and funny, but it's also bad because sometimes it's so accurate that it's incomprehensible. Fortunately, that usually doesn't really get in the way of the plot, but it can be annoying. Anyway, this is another good story of small time hoods living out their sad lives of crime and betrayal. Nothing uplifting here, but well done if you like the genre.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Cogan's Trade is the best of the first 3.

I was working in Boston in the late '70s in the Kenmore Square area. It would be hard for anyone not familiar with the territory then to figure out what is going on as the characters drive all over the place.

I find the dialog fascinating and familiar but it might be alien to younger readers.

Still a nice respite from SF and Fantasy.

[James Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book for Higgins but not quite on par with Friends of Eddie Coyle or Cogan's trade. The story is interesting but it feels just a tad watered down, as if there was a final component that was cut for lack of time. Still a good read, and full of good characters.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: ex-con Jerry Doherty takes a trip to Vegas that finds him, with the help of a loan shark, eighteen grand in the hole.

[Jiří Pavlovský · Rating 4 out of 5]

George V. Higgins je autorem slavné knihy The Friends of Eddie Coyle (zfilmované s Mitchumem v hlavní roli), kriminálky, která je téměř bez popisů, bez vysvětlování, postavená čistě na dialozích. A tohle je podobný případ. Občas narazíte na nějaké stručné nahození kulis, ale obvykle je jen střih a sledujeme několik lidí, jak se o něčem dohadují.

Celé je to z prostředí malých kriminálníků, lichvářů a chlápků, co kradou věci z kamiónů… a vlastně to ani nemá příliš příběh, natož nějaký dramatický oblouk. Hlavní hrdina, Jerry „Digger“ Doherty při výletu do Las Vegas prohrál spoustu peněz (což sám odvypráví někdy v polovině knihy). A vzápětí se dostal do konfliktu se svým známým lichvářem. Ne, že by nechtěl zaplatit, to ne. Jde čistě o to, od kterého dne mu začínají naskakovat úroky.

Což celkem vystihuje celý obsah knihy, kdy je většina postav dost malicherná a svádí dlouhé hádky o prkotinách. Jsou to skutečně malí kriminálníci, ve všech ohledech. Ani mafie, která se tady objevuje, nejsou žádné hvězdy, spíš staří páprdové, které ostatní respektují jen proto, aby jim udělali radost. A pokud už se někdo do něčeho pustí, tak se to obvykle nějakým upatlaným způsobem podělá.

„Jo, abych ti řekl pravdu, Marty, jo. Mám vlastně deset samopalů, ne jeden. Víš jak to je, když máš bar. Poldové všeho typu ti tam pořád lezou, jestli máš licenci, jestli neprovozuješ bordel, jestli nenalejváš mladistvejm, jestli něco neschováváš ve sklepě, jestli platíš daně, tyhle věci. Pořád ti tam lezou a koukaj ti do prdele. A řeknu vám, chlapy, nikdy jsem nepřišel na to, jak to, že žádnej z těch osmi nebo devíti set poldů, nikdy nenašel mý samopaly. Mám je přímo uprostřed sklepa, ve velký dřevěný bedně s nápisem „Tuhle bednu neotvírejte: Dohertyho deset samopalů.“ Fakt nechápu, jak to, že je ještě nenašli.“

Je to jedna z těch knih, u kterých si člověk není jistý, jestli je hrozná nebo geniální. Sledujeme dvě linie, které se vlastně ale nijak nepropojí. A i když nakonec dojde k nějaké akci, tak je vlastně jen zrcadlovým odrazem toho, co bylo před chvílí vyprávěno a je pozorována z velké dálky, vyděšeným řidičem únikového vozu. Ani ve finále nedojde k žádnému vyvrcholení, vyústění, ani nemluvíme o poučení či vývoji postav.
Rozhodně je ale tohle kašlání na čtenáře fascinující. Skáčete z jednoho dialogu do druhého, vidíte, jak se dvě postavy dohadují o tom, co se má udělat – aby to pak autor přeskočil a vzápětí byl střih na ty samé postavy, jak se baví o něčem jiném. Jedna kapitola je čistě o tom, jak chce hrdina od manželky půjčit deset dolarů a ta má vůči tomu námitky.

„Je to stejně prdel,“ řekl Digger, „nikdo z lidí mu nepřišel na funus, všichni jsme si říkali, srát na něj, Terry, když byl naživu, s náma všema zkoušel vyjebat, tak když je mrtvej, když ho rozstříleli na sračky, srát na něj. Ale můj svatej brácha tam šel, a když se vrátil, udělal mi dlouhou přednášku, kolik bolesti Terry způsobil svý rodině a že by nechtěl, abych mu udělal něco podobnýho. Můj úžasnej zasranej brácha. Tak mu povídám: Koukej, sem vážně rád, žes mi to řek. Dneska večer sem chtěl vyrazit ven, rozhlídnout se, jestli bych nenašel někoho, kdo by mě zastřelil, protože mi to přišlo jako bezva nápad, ale když jsi mi to takhle vylíčil, tak to neudělám. Změnil jsem názor.“

Mě celá tahle knížka přišla až skoro česká. S postavami, které by mohli dosáhnout velkých věcí, ale místo toho bazírují na prkotinách, s hrdiny, kterým se nechce ani páchat ty zločiny a hledají důvody, proč nedělat nic… až dokud jim vyloženě neteče do bot.

Takže stručné shrnutí: skvělé dialogy, zápletka téměř nulová. A myšlenka? Když o tom přemýšlím, tak hlavním tématem je to, že se z vás každý, na koho v životě narazíte, snaží tahat peníze – legálně i nelegálně. A ty legální věci způsoby jsou většinou mnohem horší.

[Tyler Real · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to start by announcing the fact that I am a big fan of George V. Higgins. His first novel (The Friends of Eddie Coyle) is one of my all-time favorite books. Perhaps someday I'll read it again and present a proper review, but in short, the way the author delivers the plot through the voices of its characters, and the way that those characters are raw and realistic and capable of keeping the story rolling by doing little more than talking contributes to authenticity that is nearly unrivaled in the genre. The Digger's Game shares that authenticity, it shares the character depth, and it shares the quality dialogue that sets Higgins apart from other crime authors. Unfortunately, it's missing something else.

The story starts as I would expect a Higgins novel to start. Digger's preparing for a job, a job involving stealing checks, and he's talking to the guy who set the job up. It's a great introduction to the character and a great bit of banter between the two. The check thieving, however, ends up having little to do with the rest of the book, and doesn't involve any consequences either. It's as if the scene exists to set the tone and reveal that Digger's in a rough financial situation.

That's about it. That's the book, more or less. Digger's in a rough financial situation because of some bad decisions, and he's trying to get out of it. His explanation of those bad decisions is a great scene, but we don't get to that until we're a quarter of the way through a book. In fairness, it is a short book, but it just doesn't grab you like the other Higgins books have. I didn't feel like I gave a damn about any of the characters or anything that was happening until a scene where Digger goes to his brother for help and they talk for fifteen pages or so about their differences and more or less what a screw-up Digger is. I thought at that point, "alright, this is good stuff," but those great scenes are a little fewer and farther between than I expected or hoped from this book.

It's a good book about a guy in trouble who's doing the jobs he knows he shouldn't be doing to get back out of trouble. It has some great criminal conversations as you would expect from Higgins, and the characters are good but they won't stick in my mind like the characters of Cogan's Trade or Eddie Coyle, and their story is just not quite as interesting.

I give it three stolen fur coats out of five.

See my other reviews on easilyamusedreviews.com

[Hobart Mariner · Rating 4 out of 5]

South Boston lowlifes and morons squabbling over gambling debts...screaming at their wives...drinking superhuman amounts of liquor. Does not get any better.

The plot is basically: Digger Doherty is a smalltime crook who has come into ownership of a tavern; he falls victim to this scam a couple business/loan shark guys have going where they fly men to Vegas to they can lose lots of money gambling and rack up huge IOU notes to the sharks. The problem the guys running things have is that, after the departure of the big boss for thirty years of prison, the Greek has been given a stake in the proceedings. And the Greek is a massively annoying prick who will scream about an $80 expense incurred during a million dollar operation. The Digger is enough of a man to stand up to him, restructuring his debt and getting help from his prig priest brother. The issue with Digger and other stuff leads the other partners to think that the Greek has to be hit. They confer with the Mafia bosses, who give their blessing, but the hit goes poorly. Meanwhile, Digger pulls off a fairly successful heist of furs that squares his debt and makes his wife happy, although the moron he got to be driver (and then shafted out of his fair share) seems to be informing on him by the end of the novel.

This stuff will be catnip to anyone who liked friends of Eddie Coyle. The dialogue is still the driver, but Higgins allows himself little nice turns of phrase like a car "leaving behind a verse of rock music." These are all gold. Also, the description of the failed hit on the Greek is excellent stuff, cinematic and violent. It's also an incredibly funny book, like a guy who spends all day drinking beer and eating burgers, then wakes up so grossed out by the smell of his own farts that he goes and throws up. It has been a second since I read Coyle but I think this one has to be funnier; it's just not quite as terse---some of the narrative goes on at length when one scumbag is telling another scumbag some (usually good and funny story). So it isn't quite at the level of Coyle but it's still phenomenally good stuff.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a decade ago I caught up with Higgins' third book, Cogan's Trade, and absolutely loved it. So I finally decided to track this down and sped through it in a day. The deal with Higgins' early 1970s Boston crime stories is that you have to really enjoy dialogue and not be too concerned about plot. There are plots, but they're really incidental, an excuse to stage a bunch of conversations among men who operate in the shadier sides of life.
In this case, a health-obsessed Greek loanshark is struggling to get along with the two guys he's fronting the money for. They've come up with a scheme in which men with good-paying white collar jobs are offered cheap junket vacations to Vegas and other gambling destinations as a means to get them to get into debt with mob-connected loansharks. One of those caught up in their scheme is bar owner Digger Dougherty, who has to come up with the money quickly, or The Greek is going to break his knees.

There are a couple of memorable scenes -- like one with Digger and his wife arguing, and another one that's a classic mobsters meeting over dinner in the private back room of a restaurant so that one can ask permission of the others to kill someone. The constant dialogue alomst lulls the reader into complacency, until things start to pick up near the end, and the reader is taken through a robbery step by step and then a frenetic murder attempt. It's not quite at the level of Cogan's Trade, but it's still a must read for those who love Boston crime fiction and/or 1970s crime fiction.

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The shoes. It's the same with everything I wear. I got trouble getting fitted. I don't go the King-Size Shop, I have to scrounge around for hours, trying to find something I can get into, doesn't look like it was to wear for going out to get shot. Okay, you go down the Basement, you get the deals. I haven't got the time. I got to go to work and get the dough you spend onna deals."

As with THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, George Higgins demonstrates that he is a master of dialogue. He truly captures 1970s Boston lowlifes with the clipped prepositions and the crazed nonsequiturs, but somehow manages to make every damned passage count so that we not only get momentum, but funny insights into these criminals and down-and-out ruffians. The Digger, in question, is one Jerry Doherty. He sees crime as a sideline, but he talks big even when everything goes wrong. At the start of this wildly entertaining novel, we get the sense that the Digger has experience and a work ethic. But it turns out that this is all talk. He's really just blustering his way through work and life. All this incredible authenticity, along with insights about loan sharks and the type of people you need to hire for a job, puts this top-tier Higgins next to the best of Richard Stark's Parker novels. Although Higgins is more about the character than the heist. He leaves you to deduce what's going on. And it's often a great shock when we read a paragraph that doesn't contain any dialogue.

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[Peter G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jerry "The Digger" Doherty is a slovenly, stubborn bartender from Boston who is mostly retired from petty crime. He goes down to Vegas and ends up owing a bookie $18,000. He's sloppy and known to the police and now past his prime but is now desperate enough to take on some risky jobs to get himself clear. It's a standard sort of set up for Higgins who, as ever, is willing to lets the story unfold from a strong central premise.

The thing I like best about Higgins's writing is the way it seems so incidental. He really does manage to make you feel like you've just been dumped down into the grimy, murky world of his characters to hang around as a fly on the wall for a couple of days. The real trick is keeping this sense of arbitrariness while also moulding the plot beats enough to make his stories seem more than just an excuse to play with the stagy, slangy Mametesque dialogue that is clearly his trademark. In this book, I don't know if the balance hits right. Certain scenes seem to linger on a bit long and there's a whole subplot involving the bookie's business that doesn't seem to connect to the main plot thematically. The book feels like it could do with a second pass just to tighten it up. It's a bit disappointing after the tautness of The Friends of Eddie Coyle, but a good read in its own right.

[Brian Grover · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Higgins is an absolute master of the "vintage crime" genre - I guess I can't think of a better way to categorize his books about small time crooks from the 1970s. The title character here (Jerry "Digger" Doherty) fits that bill admirably. He's an ex-con who runs a divey bar in Boston and still does freelance work. When he finds himself $18k in debt after a disastrous trip to Vegas, he needs a big score to keep the local loan shark away. The story is mostly concerned with Digger, who's a crude, funny, and still pretty dangerous guy. But Higgins also gives us an extended look at the local mob, and their interaction w/ this loan shark. It's all just really well executed, with sharp characters, feels a bit like a mini-season of The Wire or some similar tale of urban despair.

My third Higgins four star review, why wasn't this guy more popular!

[Manny Torres · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always with Higgins, it's the dialogue. Pages and pages of it. But the conversations are real. Especially if you've lived up north, the vernacular is perfectly rendered. People talk and talk and before you know it crimes are being committed. In so many subtle ways, an epic story takes place. And when it comes to movie adaptations, there's already been the amazing film The Friends of Eddie Coyle adapted from the Higgins book, and Killing Them Softly, directed by Andrew Dominik based on Cogan's Trade. It would be fitting if the Safdie Bros., who directed Uncut Gems, adapted this book into a film.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Digger’ Doherty is the proprietor of a Boston bar, but needs to do the occasional illegal side job to make ends meet. When he loses eighteen grand he borrowed on a trip to Las Vegas, it all ups the ante on what he has to do to pay back. I came here having loved the author’s ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ and like that book this is, for a really major part, made up of conversations that move the story along. The percentage of the book that is conversation is probably close to 90% and that makes it a little difficult to follow. It is OK, but nowhere near as satisfying as’ Eddie Coyle’.

[Justin Howe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bar tender and small time crook Jerry "Digger" Doherty finds himself in debt to loan sharks for close to twenty thousand dollars after a bad weekend in Las Vegas. The lengths Digger will go to get out from under set in motion much of the plot of this novel. But with George Higgins it's never about the plot. Instead it's all about the way dialogue reveals character as Higgins applies a sociologist's eye to the tribes and factions that made up 1970s Boston's underworld.

[Graham Techler]

“I figure, I make it, great. They gotta, there’s gotta be some reason, they call it Paradise. I don’t make it, it’s there to be had, well, too bad, at least I’ll see all my friends in the other place. And if there isn’t no other place, either kind, well, at least I didn’t waste no time worrying about it.”

Not as satisfyingly plotted as Eddie Coyle but still: that dialogue. I’ve been sitting in my big comfy chair all week reading it aloud in a thick Boston accent for fun.

[Jerstyn Morehay · Rating 5 out of 5]

George V. Higgins once again throws you in the deep end of interlocked criminal subcultures in 1970s Boston, tasking you to come up with the back stories of debts, heists, betrayals, and murder attempts between various loquacious scumbags. Kind of ends up where it begins, by which point Digger Doherty -- dive owner and degenerate gambler -- will be digging himself out of the shit once again very soon.