GIVING JACKIE BROWN HIS DUE: GEORGE V HIGGINS & THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, 50 YEARS ON

Note: This essay contains spoilers. If you haven’t read the book, you’d be better off reading it first. In fact, you’d be much better off reading the book even if you never come back to this essay again. But let’s say you do read this essay first, then read the book, and then blame me for ruining it for you, I have warned you. Don’t lay it on me.

I first read The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (published in 1970) when I was working on the road, before the movie came out, probably 1972, and definitely the original 1971 paperback pictured above, which is now in a box in my brother’s barn. I recall re-reading it back at my parents’ house after I’d moved to England, by which time I’d seen the brilliant movie. But since trying times call for special solutions, I came across a copy and realised as I read it for what I believe was the third time, and my first in about 40 years, that this was the novel’s 50th anniversary. I’ve probably seen the film another three times since then; it is a classic that repays re-watching, and nobody can fail to be stunned by Robert Mitchum’s performance.

Ask yourself how many books have you read in your lifetime that are memorable, unforgettable, that opened your eyes and opened doors for you, and then got made into movies just as good? Not many, I’ll reckon. But as I finished my anniversary read of the novel, anew, as it were, I was surprised by how fresh it still seemed, despite how well I thought I knew it. I say…