After some sidetrips into the less congenial field of Washington fact and fiction, the author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Digger's Game is back in his old, familiar territory: criminals and those who pursue them, in and around Boston. [In The Judgement of Deke Hunter, as] in the past, [Higgins's] eye for detail and his ear for dialogue are precise and vivid, his story plain and believable, his characters realistic to the point that they would be banal in less skilled hands. This time, the focus is on the family and professional problems of a detective sergeant rather than a petty criminal, and the moral seems to be that hunters and hunted are members of the same animal species. (p. E6)

Joseph McLellan, in Book World—The Washington Post (© The Washington Post), March 12, 1978.