Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
The Digger's Game
A riveting George V. Higgins masterpiece about Jerry Doherty and his trip to Vegas that puts him eighteen grand in the hole.
Jerry "Digger" Doherty is an ex-con and proprietor of a workingman's Boston bar, whosupplements his income with the occasional "odd job," like stealing live checks or picking up hot goods. Hisbrother's a priest, his wife'sa nag, and he has a deadlyapp
Hardcover, 214 pages
Published
January 28th 1973
by Alfred A. Knopf
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
170)
all the dialogue of his other books, but somehow none of the tension.
Another great Higgins exploration of midlevel gangsters in Boston. It begins with a conversation that can't be beat, and then continues with one well-dialogued situation after another. Now I know why they call them "Wise-Guys," because they all think they are smarter than whomever they are working with, when in reality they are all dumber, because they all think they have the situation figured out, and they haven't, because some part of the situation is not under their control, including what th...more
I'm predisposed to like seedy, beat-down, dialogue-heavy crime thrillers about small-time lowlifes, so Higgins is right up my alley, but he's no rote genre hack. The book is structured as a series of conversations between two or three people, with a minimum of exposition and a maximum of attention to detail to what characters' speech patterns reveal about them as people. No character is sympathetic, with the partial exception of a priest who is the main character's older brother, but each charac...more
The third GVH novel I've read, and again, the most believable criminal dialogue I've ever read (& I've read a lot of it). Amazing how little actually happens in this book - 95% of it is men talking, bad men, talking in bars, cars, recounting events both harrowing and hilarious. When actual exposition does occur, it's almost surprising - & those scenes are done well too, its almost as if it didn't interest him nearly as much to write it. Perhaps a little funnier than Eddie Coyle and Cogan...more
Higgins is great. He's written what amounts to a dozen scenes with primarily dialogue, and he gets character, plot, action, the whole thing. "Sweating like I did a mile and six furlongs". Higgins has great knowledge of the way things work in the world, first of the legal and other-than-legal business mechanics, and presents these (sometimes extremely complicated) mechanics so well from the level of the characters and where they are, so that it's never expositional but an aspekt of the way the ch...more
One of those rare times that I think a book was too short. You get Higgins' patented Boston low-life situations and dialogue, some genuinely funny scenes, but the whole thing feels rushed, rather than compact. The Digger is a fascinating character, but he barely gets "moving" before the story ends. Not in the same league as either "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" or "Cogan's Trade," but a really good airplane read.
One of the best books you'll ever see for drawing a picture with dialogue and setting.
could not get through the first chapter. May give it another try some other time.
I've always thought Higgins was seriously underestimated. I've been reading through his books, and nothing yet has changed my mind.
Great ear for dialogue, great writer whose life ended tragically - even that, typical of Higgins, managed to stay below the radar.
May 24, 2013
Amber
marked it as to-read
May 18, 2013
Mike
marked it as to-read
Apr 29, 2013
Oli Powe
marked it as to-read
Apr 14, 2013
Alex
marked it as to-read
Apr 09, 2013
Charles
added it
Apr 08, 2013
Jen
marked it as to-read
Apr 06, 2013
Steve
marked it as to-read
Apr 02, 2013
Eric Matthews
is currently reading it
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
George Vincent Higgins was a United States author, lawyer, newspaper columnist, and college professor. He is best known for his bestselling crime novels.
More about George V. Higgins...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
