George V. Higgins

Higgins was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, grew up in the nearby town of Rockland and attended Boston College, where he was editor of the campus literary magazine, Stylus, and graduated in 1961. He received an MA degree from Stanford University in 1965, and a law degree from Boston College in 1967. His full name was George Vincent Higgins II, after an uncle living in Randolph, but he dropped the numeric (unofficially) in midlife. His books were all published as by George V. Higgins. He was married twice, first to Elizabeth Mulkerin Higgins (divorced 1979); second to Loretta Cubberley Higgins.

Higgins worked as a deputy assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth, and an Assistant United States Attorney and a journalist and newspaper columnist before becoming a novelist. He wrote for the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald American, and the Wall Street Journal. He spent seven years in anti-organized-crime government positions, including Assistant U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. He entered private practice of law in 1973, and was active for ten years. During those years he represented several famous figures, such as Eldridge Cleaver (although he withdrew from the case after conflict with Cleaver [3]) and G. Gordon Liddy. He was a professor at Boston College and Boston University.

He died of a heart attack a week before his 60th birthday at his home in Milton, Massachusetts.[1][2]

Higgins was a stylist, particularly noted for his realistic dialogue, a style reminiscent of the stories of mid-20th century writer John O'Hara whose work Higgins praised in his preface to a collection of O'Hara stories.[4] Higgins was proud of his skill in rendering dialogue with great accuracy. He liked to point out that accurate dialogue is not a verbatim transcription of things said but an imaginative recreation in compressed form. He was also an expert in lending atmosphere to a series of harsh or barren facts, inducing his readers to figure out important things artfully implied in the text but never stated.

Many of Higgins's works focus on the criminal element and the cops who pursue them in and around Boston. His four Jerry Kennedy books form a connected series. Characters important in some of his novels often are mentioned in others, usually in passing but significant references, as in Trust, Outlaws, Bomber's Law and the Kennedy books. He is best remembered for his bestselling 1970 novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which was adapted into a 1973 film starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle. Higgins once wrote: "The success of The Friends of Eddie Coyle was termed 'overnight' in some quarters; that was one hell of a damned long night, lasting seventeen years..." During those 17 years, he had written 14 previous novels; he eventually destroyed them. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called The Friends of Eddie Coyle "one of the best of its genre I have read since Hemingway's The Killers."

"Like Joyce, Higgins uses language in torrents, beautifully crafted, ultimately intending to create a panoramic impression," wrote Roderick MacLeish in the Times Literary Supplement.[5] But this dialogue-laden approach did not appeal to every critic, or even MacLeish, who added, "the plot of a Higgins novel – suspense, humor and tragedy – is a blurrily perceived skeleton within the monsoon of dialogue."[5]

In 1990, Higgins published On Writing, a book of hard-bitten advice for aspiring writers. The book was notable for its long excerpts of writers Higgins admired, including William Manchester and Irwin Shaw, and also for its unusually blunt judgments ("If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.")

Films adapted from his novels:

• The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), from the book of the same name (1970)
• Killing Them Softly (2012), from Cogan's Trade (1974)

• George Higgins archive at the University of South Carolina Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
• Reviews and articles from The New York Times
• George V. Higgins page at detnovel.com
• Bibliography, at Fantastic Fiction
• The George V. Higgins Collection, at the University of South Carolina
• George V. Higgins at IMDb