The Friends of Eddie Coyle

National Book Award Finalist With a new introduction by Dennis Lehane Elmore Leonard called The Friends of Eddie Coyle "the best crime novel ever written-makes The Maltese Falcon read like Nancy Drew." Time magazine lauded its author as "America's best crime novelist." Picador celebrates the 40th anniversary of this seminal crime novel with a brand new reissue - it has been called the very best of its genre by everyone from Elmore Leonard to George Will to Norman Mailer to Anthony Bourdain. A classic. George V. Higgins's seminal crime novel is a down-and-dirty tale of thieves, mobsters, and cops on the mean streets of Boston. When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony, he's looking at three years in the pen--that is, unless he sells out one of his big-fish clients to the DA. But which of the many hoods, gunmen, and executioners whom he calls his friends should he send up the river? Told almost entirely in crackling dialogue by a vivid cast of lowlifes and detectives, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is one of the greatest crime novels ever written.

George V. Higgins (1939-1999) was a lawyer, journalist, teacher, and the author of 29 books, including Bomber's Law, Trust , and Kennedy for the Defense. His seminal crime novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the basis for the 1973 Robert Mitchum film of the same name.