The title itself suggests something of Eddie Coyle's function in the novel: He is the character around which the plot is constructed, the associative link by which other characters are introduced into its action. But his centrality in the novel is very much a matter of focus rather than significance. Coyle does not dominate the action of the novel; indeed, the book's conclusion indicates that he is an expendable victim of the world which it depicts. There is little which intrinsically distinguishes Coyle from his "friends" — those people on both sides of the law with whom he does business. The epithet "the stocky man" (the phrase which introduces Coyle in the novel) and the broken fingers which Eddie had acquired as a result of an earlier "business" deal are the limit of his physical description. He has a wife and children but little is made of Coyle's...