The Agent Book

A once brilliant career is now in the decline for Alexander Drouhin, the central character of George V Higgins' The Agent, a slangy novel of the US sports scene's less than moral underside. His underlings at what was for a while the sharpest sports agency in town are worried that his flair is gone, that he is losing them big names and failing to get new ones; above all, they are worried that his recent coming out as gay will lead to a homophobic reaction from the clients that they do still have. In a powerful opening section, we get to appreciate Drouhin as a rogue who knows how to do things--he bails out a young footballer who has been drinking on the wrong side of town. And then, suddenly, he is dead, with a hole in his head the size of a baseball; Lt Francis Clay, one of Higgins' savvy political cops, has to find the answer and knows that it will come through talking and talking until the facts of Drouhin's death fall into place... As always, Higgins scores here through his brilliant command of contemporary American idiom; this is a book in which conversation does most of the work, and does it with scabrous charm. --Roz KaveneyRead More