At End of Day: A Novel - Hardcover

Higgins, George V.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151003580 ISBN 13: 9780151003587

Publisher: Harcourt, 2000

Synopsis

Every state police officer in Boston knows that Arthur McKeach and Nick Cistaro are the most prolific and ruthless practitioners of extortion, fraud, theft, bribery, assault, and murder in the area. What none of them know is how to stop these Michelangelos of crime, who for thirty years have eluded jail-and even arrest. Their secret is at the heart of George Higgins's most searing and shocking dissection of the criminal life yet. At End of Day lays bare not only the inner workings of a criminal empire, but also reveals the corruption at the heart of American law enforcement. Few writers have mapped the intricate highways and byways of crime with equal vividness and elegance, and with At End of Day, Higgins has created a cast of characters to match his unique gifts. McKeach and Cistaro stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any of Eddie Coyle's friends, and their story solidifies George Higgins's place in the forefront of novelists who write about crime in America.

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Review

George V. Higgins, who died as At End of Day was going to press, reinvented the language of the crime novel with his ability to breathe life into the dialogue of the small-time hoodlum. At the end of all of Higgins's fictional days--from his first novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, to this practically posthumous work--lie 1,001 nights in which FBI agents and crime bosses become consonant-dropping, vowel-skewing, grammar-ignoring Scheherazades whose stories are recounted with the deadly accurate tone that became the author's trademark.

At End of Day tells the story of the downfall of Boston mobster Arthur McKeach; more precisely, it tells the story of those who tell the story of McKeach's undoing. In Higgins's world--though he could write a mean murder scene--crime is less an immediate event than a moment to which his characters return to weave complicated, often conflicting narratives. At the novel's center lies a problematic alliance between McKeach and his top henchman, Nick Cistaro, and FBI agents Darren Stoat and Jack Farrier: the mobsters provide information to the FBI about their Mafia rivals in return for protection. To say that the partnership serves to humanize both sides, or to claim that the yoke of creative necessity harnesses men who are ironically similar, is to pander to the obvious. Far better to relax into the intoxicating rhythms of the characters' language, as when McKeach attempts to educate a horrified Stoat in the underworld code of behavior:

His expression was calm, his tone the patient monotone, varied by occasional emphasis, that an earnest instructor would use addressing interested novices. 'But then the big guys get involved in private fights, one of them floats in onna tide? Reason don't matter--if he's big then his guys're involved, they don't have no choice. It's then a matter of honor. And besides, if the guys who aren't dead, if they expect to keep what they've got, well then, they'd better get involved too. Show some respect for their guy who is dead, and retaliate, right? Because otherwise the guys who did him'll come around and do them, take over his whole territory. So--never mind why he is dead, he is dead--revenge is their duty to him, and themselves, to show they're still men.'

McKeach lives, and others die, by this code; his unwavering control is the axis around which At End of Day revolves. Higgins fans both old and new will find themselves captivated by McKeach's authority and Higgins's hypnotic prose. --Kelly Flynn

About the Author

George V. Higgins is the author of more than twenty novels, most notably The Friends of Eddie Coyle. At End of Day is his last novel completed just prior to his death in 1999.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0151003580
• ISBN 13: 9780151003587
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 392