The classic novel from "America's best crime novelist" (Time) with a new introduction by Dennis Lehane George V. Higgins's seminal crime novel is a down-and-dirty tale of thieves mobsters and cops on the mean streets of Boston. When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony he's looking at three years in the pen--that is unless he sells out one of his big-fish clients to the DA. But which of the many hoods gunmen and executioners whom he calls his friends should he send up the river? Told almost entirely in crackling dialogue by a vivid cast of lowlifes and detectives The Friends of Eddie Coyle is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. “The best crime novel ever written--makes The Maltese Falcon read like Nancy Drew.” -- Elmore Leonard