Preview of Trust and Victories Summary:

Victories, according to its blurb, is the "companion novel" to Trust.

The relationship between the two is peculiar: both are set in the same period (fall-winter 1967 to 1968); significant characters appear in both novels; and the plots overlap in minor ways; yet each is an autonomous work. Victories is not a sequel to Trust.

Trust focuses upon the experience of Earl Beale, another example of Higgins's patented type, the loquacious grifter. Earl is a college basketball player who was caught and imprisoned for fixing games. Now, in late 1967, Earl sells used cars and schemes to exploit his girlfriend's sometime occupation as a rich man's mistress. Returning a favor for someone who has done him a favor, he also gets involved in a scheme to protect a philandering judge by stealing and destroying the judge's Mercedes. Both schemes go awry: Earl has sufficient street smarts to...