'Flawless of its kind - never a false word, phrase, rhythm, gesture.' - The New Republic 'Every American crime writer of the past 30 years owes a debt to George V Higgins. Higgins is the daddy. Read him and rejoice' Val McDermid Jerry 'Digger' Doherty is an ex-con and proprietor of a workingman's Boston bar, who supplements his income with the occasional 'odd job', like stealing live checks or picking up hot goods. His brother's a priest, his wife's a nag, and he has a deadly appetite for martinis and gambling. On a trip ...
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'Flawless of its kind - never a false word, phrase, rhythm, gesture.' - The New Republic 'Every American crime writer of the past 30 years owes a debt to George V Higgins. Higgins is the daddy. Read him and rejoice' Val McDermid Jerry 'Digger' Doherty is an ex-con and proprietor of a workingman's Boston bar, who supplements his income with the occasional 'odd job', like stealing live checks or picking up hot goods. His brother's a priest, his wife's a nag, and he has a deadly appetite for martinis and gambling. On a trip to Vegas, the Digger finds himself in the sights of a loan shark known as 'The Greek'. Luckily - if you call it luck - the Digger has been let in on a little job that can turn his gambling debt into a profit, if only he can pull it off without getting himself killed.
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Seller's Description:
Good in Good jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Jacket rubbed with edgewear. Green cloth boards are rubbed at corners and tips. Pages are clean, text has no markings, binding is sound.
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Seller's Description:
New York. 1973. March 1973. Knopf. 1st American Edition. Previous Owner's Name Penned in Front, Otherwise Very Good in Dustjacket. 0394483162. 218 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Hal Siegel. keywords: Literature America Boston. FROM THE PUBLISHER-With all his brilliance of suspense, verisimilitude, and ‘dialogue so authentic it spits, ' George V. Higgins floodlights the murky area of the city-his setting once more is Boston-where the borders between legitimate and criminal enterprise vanish in a fog of greed, and violence is just around the corner. This is how a slick (Beacon Street) setup like the Regent Sportsmen's Club, Inc., works. It's an air charter operation: package tours to top casinos. What its clients-respectable businessmen hooked on gambling-don't know is that in addition to the front man, a seemingly respectable ex-stockbroker, one of the partners is a Mafia connection and the third, put in by the Mob, is ‘the Greek, ' the loan shark who collects the markers. A smooth enterprise, neat, profitable, until. That's where the Digger comes in. The Digger is Jerry Doherty, proprietor of a workingman's bar, who supplements his income with occasional odd jobs like stealing live checks or picking up hot goods. He contrives to stay out of jail (his brother, a priest, has political clout). But they've hooked the not-so-respectable Digger with a bargain fare on a half-empty plane to Vegas, and now he owes $18, 000 and the Greek is crowding him. The partners are scared the Creek isn't up to tangling with a tough proposition like the Digger. The Don himself is nervous. The smooth enterprise gets rough-and one thing seems more and more certain: whether it's the Digger or the Greek or the ex-broker or the Mafia man, someone's going to die. In scene after scene-as the novel rushes toward its violent climax-Higgins makes overwhelmingly real the world of the loan shark, the world of the Mafia-connected businessman, the machinery of their operations, and the inevitable semi-pros who, like the Digger, grease, and sometimes jam, the gears. inventory #28198.