Title: Strangled By His "Black Belt in Dialogue" (Newsweek)
Product review: Sadly, George V. Higgins's writing career was an object lesson in the perils of believing your own press. "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," his first, is an indisputable neo-noir champ. But it was also his undoing. Reviewers and peers fell over one another to praise his ear for the language of the street, and all his subsequent novels trip over their excessive flexing of that particular muscle. The underlying story of "Sandra Nichols Found Dead," featuring attorney Jerry Kennedy, has great potential, but it is buried within the first few pages under an avalanche of rambling, tedious dialogue from which it never digs itself out.
Would you say this review depicts the product in a flattering or unflattering light?
