Foley tells Dillon, “I don’t really know very much about [Coyle’s New Hamp-
shire] case” (148), Higgins relies on his audience’s prior knowledge of Foley’s
discussions with Coyle to communicate something very different, namely, that
Foley does not trust Dillon enough to share his knowledge.
Once we attend to the relationships between authorial disclosure and con-
versational disclosure in Eddie Coyle, we can recognize that Higgins’s skill
with the dialogue is at least as much about his management of those relation-
ships as it is with his ability to make the dialogue sound “authentic.” It is this
skill, I suggest, that Lehane is responding to in his hyperbolic claim that in
Eddie Coyle the dialogue is “the whole shebang.”
TEXTUAL DYNAMICS IN EDDIE COYLE
Although Eddie is the protagonist, the textual dynamics indicate that Hig-
gins is constructing a network novel. That is, Eddie’s fate is inextricably tied
to events, including the flow of information, and judgments by people in two
larger networks in which he participates: (a) the Boston crime network, involv-
ing gun dealers, bank robbers, some other small-time players like himself,
the initially enigmatic Dillon, and ultimately the head of the regional Mafia,
and (b) the New England law enforcement network, involving U.S. Treasury
agents like Foley, the Boston police, the Massachusetts State Police, and the
district attorney in New Hampshire. In addition, the very structure of the tell-
ing—the thirty discrete scenes of dialogue—can be understood as a network
of disclosure that reinforces the novel’s interest in networks and the flow of
information within and across them. The textual dynamics show that although
different characters have different degrees of knowledge about the links in the
larger networks, no single character has a comprehensive knowledge of those
links, something that has major consequences for Eddie, as a sketch of the plot
dynamics will reveal.
In the first three chapters, Higgins shows Eddie making three deals: one
with Jackie Brown to buy some guns, one with Foley to inform on Jackie, and
one with Jimmy Scalisi to sell the guns at a nice profit. By the end of the third
chapter, Higgins has clearly established Eddie’s character and shown his con-
nections to the two different networks, with the crime network itself having
two distinct branches. By the end of the third chapter, Higgins has launched
the progression by intertwining Eddie’s three deals and indicating that Eddie’s
facing jail time is one global instability and the question of whether he can
walk the tightrope between the different networks is another. The ensuing
chapters trace multiple complications. Jimmy Scalisi uses the guns he gets
174 • CHAPTER 9