George V. Higgins (George Vincent Higgins) Biography

American lawyer and crime writer, born in Brocton, Massachusetts, educated at Stanford University and Boston Law School. A former newspaper reporter and Boston district attorney, Higgins has used his knowledge of criminal life, law, and local politics to good effect in a series of critically acclaimed and successful novels set in and around Boston whose characters, for the most part, come from the Boston Irish. The first of these, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972), is wholly original: the narration is carried forward almost completely through conversation and monologue, rich in colloquial and criminal expressions, and which imitate, almost exaggeratedly, the repetitions and hesitations of everyday speech. Higgins continued in the same vein with The Digger's Game (1973), Coogan's Trade (1974), and The Judgement of Deke Hunter (1976). In A Year or So with Edgar (1979), Kennedy for the Defense (1980), A Choice of Enemies (1984), and Penance for Jerry Kennedy (1985), Higgins explored individual lives in the police, the press, the law, and the judiciary. He returned to low-life in Impostors (1986), Outlaws (1987), and Wonderful Years, Wonderful Years (1988), where a whole complex of issues surrounding personal and political integrity are uncovered with precision and scepticism. More recently, with works such as Trust (1989), which explores the multiple mendacities and deceptions of an ex-jailbird turned used car salesman, Higgins appears to have moved away from the crime novel to depict a section of contemporary American life frequently seen in the novels of dirty realist writers such as Richard Ford or Raymond Carver.