The Coral Island are, in his own words, "adventure stories for young folks", and "The Coral Island" is no exception. It is a Robinsonade, a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), one of the most popular of its type, and one of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes. Susan Maher, professor of English, notes that in comparison to "Robinson Crusoe" such books generally replaced some of the original's romance with a "pedestrian realism", exemplified by works such as "The Coral Island" and Frederick Marryat's 1841 novel "Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific".
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (novel) The Friends of Eddie Coyle (novel) The Friends of Eddie Coyle, published in 1970, was the debut novel of George V. Higgins, then an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston. The novel is a realistic depiction of the Irish-American underworld in Boston. Its central character is the title character Eddie Coyle, a small-time criminal and informant. "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" was adapted into a 1973 film, directed by Peter Yates and starring Robert Mitchum. The relentless realism and unglamorous nature of the characters in "Eddie Coyle" was in sharp contrast to some other gangster novels of the era, particularly