I suspect that most fans of detective/crime novels would agree that one of the masterpieces of the genre is George V. Higgins The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It's Higgins' first novel, and he advanced the plot almost entirely through dialogue, for which he had a keen ear. Combined with Mr. Higgins' gift for pacing and his gifted style, the Bostonian felons and morally dubious FBI agents and policemen who inhabit this book make it one my own ten best crime novels ever.

Richard Marinick, a man who could well of been one of Eddie Coyle's friends in real life (he spent time in prison for robbing an armored car, which culminated, Mr. Marinick says, in a messy chase in Western Massachusetts), is clearly an epigone of George Higgins. Mr. Marinick is also a master of dialogue, and his characters sound a lot like the New Englanders (e.g. saying "going down New York" instead of "down to New York") with whom I have passed many happy hours of my life.

Boyos is Richard Marinick's first novel, and it is a doozy. A couple of the reviews on this page aver that this is a book that would benefit greatly from a judicious editing. That is indeed true; the first half of the book, while full of lively underworld argot that is certainly entertaining, becomes occasionally tedious. This novel lacks what distinguished The Friends of Eddie Coyle: economy. I would argue that one-quarter to one-third of this book could have been blue-penciled away. That would have resulted in a more focused book and probably made the characters even more vivid. In any case, better editing would have pushed this book, for me at least, into five-star territory.

Hey big publishers: how about giving this man a three-book deal, and then assigning him an editor who can help him tame and channel his obvious gifts as a writer?

Liked it because I grew up in the City Point neighborhood of Southie, where much of the novel is set ( )

http://www.fantasybookspot.com/node/1286 ( )