Old school crime novel. One that does not pretend that all criminals are Robin Hoods of sorts but hard man ready to spill blood because order must exist and no trespass is to be tolerated (you know that old - nothing personal just business).

Dialogs are great (may be off putting to some though) and they give this book its charm.

Highly recommended to anyone who likes gritty crime stories. ( )

excellent movie ( )

Another great Higgins, low life / crime Boston novel. The dialog is really what it's about here, but it is absolutely worth the whole. The story.... concerning knocking over a card game and trying to shift the blame to a specific target and then watching it all unspool is ... kind of messy. I found myself unsure where i was at in the story at various points as the author drops us into conversations @ the mid point - purposefully i think- and sometimes we are in the midst of a long story that is not part of our novel (dialog again). Slightly disorienting, but again- o so worth it for the great dialog. ( )

You go to work and try to get stuff done and someone screws up and now you have to fix it.

This isn't the first Higgins book to read; that's probably The Friends of Eddie Coyle. But it may be the best of the ones I've read so far. There are some monologues that go on a bit too long, but the scenes with Cogan are perfect--pitch perfect. The whole mechanism of the plot is something I've never seen in any other crime novel. The scene with Cogan and Frankie in the bar is worth the whole book. There's also a great recording of this on Audible. It's probably the most obscene thing I've ever read, but how often do you finish a book and genuinely wish it were much, much longer? I could read about Jackie Cogan for a thousand pages. And he has the best last line in American literature. ( )

10 Sterne!! HAMMER !!!! ( )