Wonderful Years, Wonderful Years

George V. Higgins’s seventeenth novel is one of his least overtly crime-focused, as he uses a public works corruption case as a hook to explore mental illness more generally — and the effect it has on other family members. The story is told almost entirely through dialogue, and Higgins populates the novel with a memorable and sometimes very funny cast of characters. The plot is a bit convoluted and the narrative threads are often difficult to follow, but everything comes together nicely in the end.