The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Friends are one thing Eddie Coyle doesn't have. He talks to a lot of guys—this book is made of talking—but every conversation is a wary exchange, negotiated sometimes in half-spoken ways and sometimes with brutal directness. Why is this book, which Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane agree is the greatest crime novel, not even better known? Maybe because its brilliant but sometimes unforgiving reliance on the ambiguities of conversation makes it closer to Dubliners than The Firm. Maybe because Eddie's life of driving up and down the outer freeways of New England and getting drunk at Bruins games carries none of the dark glamour of the best-known crime story of its era, The Godfather. But oh, this book, and all its talk, is still a marvel, fifty years on.