Outlaws

I first read George Higgins' "Outlaws" many years ago. It made such an impression on me, that for the last 3 to 4 years I have been looking for it in used book stores. Higgins was a great crime writer (Elmore Leonard turned to writing crime novels after reading Higgin's "Eddie Coyle"), but unfortunately, especially since his death, it seems his reputation is shrking down to only that of "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." And that's a shame, since "Outlaws" is arguably the greater novel. "Eddie Coyle" is a fine novel. But with "Outlaws," Higgins leapt beyond genre, into great fiction."Outlaws" on surface tells the story of a bunch of young college kids turned 60s era terrorists (SLA, Weathermen). But that's only part of it. "Outlaws" is also a book that captures what America was, is, and is heading toward. Lines converge in a way that bring together the CIA, organized crime, corruption, hypocrisy, infidelity, government sanctioned assasination, and terrorism, and casts them across the rapidly changing (or is it?) moral landscape of our country. For you see, the robberies of the gang are simply stones dropped into the American pond. It's the ripples that they create that triggers the more real story. Higgin's method is inventive. It's true, most of the action is revealed in a delayed fashion, through conversations (dead on dialogue, of the kind you find in the best Leonard novels). However, what makes the dialogue so fascinating in "Outlaws," is that Higgins moves from one social (or professional) group to another, with complete beliavability. And in the case of the women socialites who dwell on the fault lines of where so many of the story lines converge, there is a chilling accuracy (in particular, at a memorable dinner party) that one finds in the 3 witches/fates of Macbeth. Words can cut and kill. The one truth that does come out: we are all, to some extent, Outlaws. It doesn't get better than this.