Here's a tip on how to read The Judgment of Deke Hunter. Read only Chapters 5, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, and 22, and you'll enjoy an exciting, colorful, funny, clever, and rather provocative novelette about a bank robbery trial….

So much for the good parts. The rest of the book, as one of George V. Higgins' characters would put it, sucks.

The female characters … aren't worth knowing. Higgins seems to think he'd be branded naïvely romantic if he depicted a happy marriage. Every scene involving a married couple shows them bickering, and reading them is as much a waste of time as watching The Honeymooners. The fact that Higgins' audience is (probably) mostly male is ironic, since so much of his book is soap opera. (p. 1302)

Higgins has comic talent; you wonder why he doesn't settle down and write something non-serious. His comedy is broad, but with surprising touches of subtlety…. But the...