Killing Them Softly

Mario Puzo gives us eloquent and artistic proses when unfolding a story of the Mafia, and underworld. George V. Higgins gives you the grit, the hard-boiled inner-workings of low on the totem pole true thugs. On reading the book, you feel like your sitting around the table listening to their conversation face to face. The author's gift of planting the reader on street level of day to day goings on of south Boston mobsters is astounding. George V. Higgins today, is quite underrated and thinly read. It's an abysmal shame.

The late George V. Higgins earned a reputation as a master of low-life dialogue. Entire chapters of his books were often conversations, sometimes essentially monologues. This was a risky way to write. Some readers found the endless talk tedious, and many (this reviewer included) found his output uneven. Cogan's Trade was perhaps his best, a slender and deceptively simple tale of intramural activity of the Boston area mob. A web of connections determines who does what to whom as the title character emerges to become a grand inquisitor who forgot about the commandment that states "Thou shalt not kill." Jackie Cogan, compact and intense, is a cold-blooded paradigm of mob virtue, while other characters prove they're not as smart as they think they are. The result is a suspenseful tale full of comic relief. Most readers are content to go along for the ride, but the repeat reader begins to see layers and symbolism in the this little masterpiece from "the Balzac of the Boston underworld."

Cogan's Trade was one of George Higgins' earlier crime novels written in the 1970s. It is uniquely written in that the text is almost all dialogue. It is a story of Boston area Irish-American lowlife mobsters and their escapades. It concerns the gunpoint robbery of a mob-protected high stakes card game and the mayhem that ensues. The characters are all quite colorful and their language captures the time and the mileu. It is a novel I've reread several times and throughly enjoyed each reading . Definitely recommended for aficionados of the hard-boiled school of crime novels.