Writing style
Dialogue-driven · Direct · Spare
Apple BooksThe Friends of Eddie Coyle
Mystery and thriller · Noir
- First published
- 1970
- Print length
- 183 pagesHenry Holt, 1995
Description
Eddie Coyle is an aging Boston gunrunner facing prison for driving a hijacked truck. His best chance of avoiding a sentence is to give ATF agent Dave Foley useful information, but cooperation offers no clean escape: Foley keeps demanding more, while Eddie continues supplying weapons to bank robbers and negotiating with dealers in military firearms. Every conversation becomes a calculation of what a name, gun, or promise might buy, and whether the person across the table can be trusted. Built from clipped exchanges among criminals and law-enforcement officers, the novel presents Boston’s Irish-American underworld without glamour, showing loyalty and friendship as transactions shaped by leverage, fear, and the quiet knowledge that minor players are always the easiest to sacrifice.
Reading profile
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Pace
Brisk
Tone
Bleak · Dark · Detached · Tense
Structure
Episodic · Linear
Focus
Character · Plot · Relationships
Emotional intensity
4 / 5
Reading complexity
1–5 · higher means more demanding- Writing
- 2 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 3 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
Themes
More by George V. Higgins
Book details
For the print edition listed above.
- Publisher
- Henry Holt
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780805041521
Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.
Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.