George V. Higgins has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Summary
George V. Higgins, the internationally-acclaimed grand master of crime fiction, returns to thrill listeners with this riveting tale of cops, robbers, and big city low life. An expertly crafted story of loyalty and betrayal, it is peppered with wonderfully authentic dialogue and seedy black-market atmosphere. Eddie Coyle is a small-time gun dealer with a big-time problem: who to sell out to avoid going to prison. While mob bosses, cops, hoods, gunmen, thieves, and executioners give Eddie plenty of choices, he has few options. Any decision could cost him his life. Shady deals and accusations fly as fast and deadly as bullets in this riveting audiobook. The combination of Higgins and narrator Mark Hammer will leave you with mental images of crime and justice that you never thought possible before.
©1970, 1971 George V. Higgins (P)1996 Recorded Books, LLC
Sandra Nichols Found Dead
Summary
A dead body, discovered by a hapless plant thief blithely trespassing in a rural Massachusetts wetland, turns out to belong to a woman with a past by the name of Sandra Nichols. Wrongful death? Murder one? We'll leave that to Jerry Kennedy. Judge Henry Lawler has his own reasons for appointing classmate Jerry Kennedy to try what becomes in time the case of the Estate of Sandra Nichols v. Peter Wade, on behalf of the descendant's three children. An old hand at trying criminal cases, Jerry has always studiously avoided civil cases (he's more comfortable with armed robbery, tax evasion, embezzling, bribery, and corruption). But this time Jerry makes an exception for Judge Henry. After all, it's the right thing to do for the orphans. And besides, what are friends for if not to impose on a guy? Inasmuch as Sandra Nichols was murdered several months before her body was found, alibis are fairly easy to come by, even for Peter Wade, Sandra's ex, who is the most likely suspect. On the criminal side of the law, if the defendant isn't caught in the act, there are three things a prosecutor must prove, all of which Wade has in spades: motive, means, and opportunity. The evidence is too elusive to establish Wade's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; wrongful death is easier: all Jerry Kennedy needs to do is make Wade's part in Sandra's death 51 percent certain.
©1996 George V. Higgins (P)1996 Blackstone Audiobooks
A Change of Gravity
Summary
Two friends, Ambrose Merrion, a clerk of the court of Massachusetts, and Danny Hilliard, a rising politician, agree that politics is the way to help society take care of its own. With Merrion shrewdly managing his friend's campaigns, they make an excellent team, managing to revitalize the local economy and to protect the unfortunate snared in the criminal justice system. But trouble starts brewing when Merrion unexpectedly inherits ill-gotten gains from a corrupt predecessor, enabling him to indulge with Danny in the finer luxuries. To Merrion's dismay, Hilliard begins a streak of mischief that quickly flares into an adultery scandal. What was good clean wickedness in 1960 had become a crime in 1996. Now, a righteous, vengeful prosecutor believes he has found an exquisitely ingenious way to put Hilliard in jail, by forcing Merrion to incriminate him.
©1997 George V. Higgins (P)1997 Blackstone Audiobooks
Defending Billy Ryan
Summary
In best-selling author George Higgins' electrifying legal thriller, Jerry Kennedy, the guy his ex-wife calls "the classiest sleazy criminal lawyer", must defend the man that no one else will: Billy Ryan. An excerpt: "If they didn't have Billy for selling the apple to the serpent who peddled it to Eve, it was because the serpent refused to testify against him. Professional courtesy and all that."
©1992 George V. Higgins (P)1997 by Blackstone Audiobooks
The Progress of the Seasons
Summary
This is a book about baseball, our national pastime. The centerpiece is a team that hasn't won the championship for more than eighty years. The Boston Red Sox, however, are only part of the story. The rest turns on thoughts about family and continuity and, of course, the progress of the seasons; something, you'll learn, any reasonably intelligent man or woman is supposed to know about. The Progress of the Seasons confirms what admirers of the author's sparkling accurate prose already know: Higgins is to writing what Ted Williams was to baseball, an all-star. Beginning in 1946, the then eight-year-old author, accompanied by father and grandfather, takes the long train ride out to Fenway Park to find some truth in immortals like Doerr, DiMaggio, York, and Williams (imagine the records Ted Williams would have engraved if he hadn't left the field for World War II and Korea), and, later, Yastremski, Marty Barrett, and many more. Beyond the games, there's a magical moment when George Higgins calls on his own mythic Emily to check the all-time lineup with his deceased forebears. By then you've come to know what the author's values have in common with those in Our Town and why certain professional athletes achieve immortality and others don't. And to think, as Johnny Pesky reminds us, "It's such a simple game...and it's so hard to play."
©1989 George V. Higgins (P)1997 Blackstone Audiobooks