IMPOSTORS

by George V. Higgins ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 28, 1986

In previous novels, Higgins--among the most genuinely pessimistic and unsentimental of American fiction writers--has turned his steely, observant eye on ugly doings in the crime-world, in high finance, in state politics, in an everyday law practice. This time the entirely white-collar focus is on journalism, local government, and the real-estate business; sex--as power, as weakness, as blackmail--is more prominent than in any other Higgins book; and the form is a series of leisurely yet intense dialogue scenes--one-on-one encounters in which pressures are applied, deals are made, and secrets are probed. . .as a small, multi-issue plot is slowly advanced. The central story? Aging playboy Mark Baldwin, a born-rich Boston press mogul, hires Connie Gates (a paralegal investigator with some newspaper background) to write a big magazine story about Joe Logan--a local TV-anchorman who's about to be tried for murdering the drunk driver responsible (but only lightly punished) for the death of Logan's wife and son. But Baldwin never intends to print the story: he just wants to learn, in a safely roundabout way, if Logan--who has vowed to turn the trial into an exposÉ of the corrupt US justice system--plans to expose Baldwin's own criminal secret (a hushed-up, bought-off statutory rape charge) from their bygone days together at a small-town newspaper. As Connie sets out on a sequence of interviews, however, a dozen other nasty tensions ripple out from Baldwin's self-protective maneuvers. The Logan/Baldwin past that Connie is raking up also touches on a covered-up murder case (involving a secretly gay newsman), on ruthless land dealings; a key figure in those land dealings just happens to be the financier husband (also secretly gay) of Baldwin's neurotically possessive, suicidal mistress. So, while Connie moves relentlessly on to her long interview-sessions with Logan himself, Baldwin attends to damage control--forging uneasy alliances over fancy lunches, quietly arranging (with inadvertent help from an easily seduced Connie) for the elimination of that increasingly embarrassing mistress. Neither of the two major characters here is always fully convincing: selfish hedonist Baldwin must occasionally make implausibly naive moves to keep the plot-wheels turning; Connie, a gorgeous divorcee who has willingly given her ex-husband custody of their children, is similarly inconsistent--an uneven, ambitious study in post-feminist confusion (toughness vs. coldness, liberation vs. whoredom or promiscuity). And, as in several other Higgins novels, there's little in the way of present-tense drama--with all the action (except for a few graphic, spare sex scenes) emerging in the rich, discursive, often compelling reminiscences of the shrewd, colorful conversationalists here. Readers looking for traditional suspense/melodrama pleasures, then, should definitely look elsewhere. But for those who've responded to Higgins' distinctive, risky mixtures of dour social commentary, verbal bravura, and downbeat morality-play, this long novel--nearly always absorbing if only half-satisfying--will provide impressive, expansive confirmation of the talents he's been experimenting with over the past decade.

Pub Date: May 28, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION