Book Review: The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille

This one was actually recommended by a fellow user here and someone whose opinion I value. I regret to say that while this book is very easily "digested" I do not share the sentiment of the person who made the comment about this book being a masterpiece. This doesn't mean I am correct and he is wrong, it just means that I found this book to be rather average and this may simply boil down to us having different taste in topic matter.

_{probably time for another haircut soon}

This book was written in 1990 and I am kind of surprised that it doesn't have much of an online presence as far as information about it is concerned. Since DeMille is a very popular writer I kind of expected there to be more discussion about it but there just isn't. Virtually everything else the guy has written has its own wiki but The Gold Coast does not. Strange. Maybe it didn't go over so well at the time because the cover art on the Kindle states that the AUTHOR is a best seller not that this particular book was.

It also took DeMille nearly 20 years to write a sequel as he had moved onto other things and this could be a bit of a reflection of how the author felt about the book as well. DeMille has several central characters that appear in multiple books and the one he focuses heavily on in this one is John Sutter. There are only 2 books about this character whereas his other central characters have 3, 6, and 8.

Do with this information what you will.

The book is kind of a mystery novel, kind of a gangster (of the mafia sort) of novel, and kind of a legal thriller.

The central character of John Sutter lives in a rather exclusive area on The Gold Coast which is in Long Island which is near New York City. He has been there for a while and is a successful lawyer. One day a new neighbor moves in next door and later tries to do neighborly things such as getting to know who is adjacent to their property. Turns out this new neighbor is a mafia don named Frank Bellarosa.

Sutter and his wife are like the others on the exclusive coast whereas Frank is mainly seen as unwelcome there. When Sutter tries to be a nice neighbor and be civil towards his new neighbor he is informed by other residents that his new neighbor isn't welcome at the various clubs and restaurants and this kind of makes John realize that the people that he lives around are kind of self-absorbed and kind of jerks. John is a lawyer and while he is aware that his neighbor is a mafia boss, the man hasn't actually been convicted of anything so the lawyer side in him kicks in to defend the man as "innocent until proven guilty" which I think is fair enough.

Things pass on and get stranger with their interactions though until one day the mafia don asks Sutter to represent him in court, and this is where the book kind of stopped holding my interest even though I did read it. What happens for about 100 pages during this part is i feel, kind of intentionally drawn out. I was hoping for some sort of fast-moving, fast-talking, mafia stuff to start invading Sutter's life but it, well, it just doesn't. We the audience are apparently made to think that it is just around the corner but it never really happens.

What happens instead is that John starts to become a bit fascinated with Frank to the point of imitating his speech and speaking a bit of Italian here and there, capisce? (dozens if not hundreds of sentences are ended in "capisce")

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The parts of the book that I did like where when Frank Bellarosa takes John to certain parts of New York where the mafia don is treated like royalty and because of this by extension, John, his guest, is treated the same way. he is able to glance into the life of organized crime without being a real participant and this perspective is interesting. I would have liked if they had explored that more.

The trial itself never really gets focused on a great deal, the preparation for it is is 'kind of" focused on, but most of it is just two dudes from two very different worlds hanging out a bit. There is a sort of love tryst that takes place in there as well but I am not going to spoil that for any potential readers because when it does get revealed to you it is kind of shocking considering the information we have been giving about the characters up to that point.

This book is regarded by some as a literary classic and if that is indeed the case, then I guess I am either not smart enough to get it, or I just disagree.

This book is not bad by any stretch, it is very easy to follow and the chapters are a good length although this is just a personal preference. The author doesn't focus on using unnecessarily large words for the sake of appearing more intelligent than the audience, and he doesn't introduce 10,000 characters so that we have a difficult time keeping up. For the most part, the only characters that we REALLY need to know are John, John's wife, and Frank. The rest of them are rather irrelevant.

For me this one is one that you should read if you are into mob stuff but don't want it to get all bloody and unbelievable, and you like a bit of courtroom drama mixed from the perspective of a very educated lawyer (John Sutter) who kind of doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks of him even though he is held in really high regard but just about everyone.

In the end I wasn't really that disappointed when this one was over but I was still glad I had read it. Thanks to the person (you know who you are) who recommended it but honestly, I am unlikely to go running off to check out more of DeMille's works. I don't think based on this one book that I am a fan of his style even though it appears as though most people in the literary community disagree with me vehemently.