Writers sometimes do seem to follow the admonition to write about what they know; no doubt, George V. Higgins drew upon his experience in the criminal justice system in writing The Friends of Eddie Coyle. The novel was hailed for its originality: perhaps because it was devoid of the sort of psychopathological characterization which commonly marked the novel of violent crime, without adopting the sort of playfulness which was so often evident in novels of crime which are without a powerfully violent element. Or perhaps it was hailed because the oppositional force of the police was so consistently underplayed (the police, in fact, virtually disappear in Higgins's next two novels).

Surely, The Friends of Eddie Coyle has an important place within the tradition of the American crime novel from Dashiell Hammett to Elmore Leonard (who is in many ways a useful contemporary figure for comparison). As...