Gold Coast is one of Elmore Leonard's best character studies in the guise of a crime thriller. You could also call it a crime thriller in the guise of a character study. I am not sure. Elmore really does spin a tall tale here. Karen DiCillia, an attractive widow in her forties, cannot seem to maintain relationships with men. She hits it off with them on the first meeting but then they seem to back off for no good reason. Upon some deep digging, she discovers that her dead Italian gangster husban...

The best Elmore Leonard novel I've read since embarking upon my marathon re-read.Karen DiCilia has been married to Frank -a high-ranking Mafiosi elder- for eight years when he suffers a killer heart attack and dies. Karen and Frank had recently had a fight after Karen discovers that Frank has been carrying on an affair with a female real estate agent. Karen asks Frank how he would like it if she had an extra-marital affair. Frank takes such a prospect as a threat.Upon Frank's death Karen inherit...

2.5 stars.Title this review, “The Time One of My Favorite Authors Wrote a Book I Didn’t Like Very Much.”It happens. R.E.M. gives us Around the Sun, Quentin Tarantino writes and directs Death Proof, Michael Fassbender appears in Jonah Hex. Even our most reliable artists stumble from time to time – it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise – and with any luck, they recover. That’s largely how I feel about Gold Coast, a book that seems to have something on its mind but doesn’t execute very well....

So much fun. Right on page 9, what I love about Elmore: Karen, “Playing a role and enjoying it. It was real.”Or page 61, Maguire in a rant after my own heart: “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, I said it wasn’t real. It’s like a refuge. Nothing can happen to you there, you’re safe. But it’s got nothing to do with reality. It’s like you’re given security, but in exchange for it you have to give up yourself. You have to become somebody else.”Getting it, even in the stories that are just pure fun, the...

this is something like the...15th, 16th from leonard for me...kindle edition.dedicated: for bill leonardstory begins:one day karen dicilia put a few observations together and realized her husband frank was sleeping with a real estate woman in boca.karen knew where they were doing it, too. in one of the condominiums frank owned, part of oceana estates.time & place*florida...fort lauderdale...miami...miami beach*karen's present address, 1 isla bahia...the harbor beach section of lauderdale*detroit...

I was a little disappointed with this one. Leonard is one of my heroes, and I just couldn't get into this one. I was all for Cal's role in the story because he seemed like a decent guy in spite of some of the choices he made, but Karen as a protagonist was just unlikeable. Stick up her ass the entire book, and the ending was both unexpected and a let-down after getting through the rest of the book. I was surprised because I had heard this was one of the really good ones to add to the Elmore Leon...

I’ve read some really harsh reviews of this book here on Goodreads and I just don’t understand. This is Elmore Leonard and this is what he does. He usually has a two-bit shit-bag like Rowland, and Rowland is up there among the best two-bit shit-bags. He’s just aching to rape and kill yet he exercises a bit of restraint to further his bigger plan, which is never really revealed.I listened to the fantastic audio-book narrated by the late great Frank Muller when I was out riding my bike, and read t...

Elmore Leonard was ethically a little slippery; some of his novels show a strong sense of moral principle; others are pretty frankly amoral, even if they acknowledge differing degrees of bad. This is one of the latter. There's not much here that's uplifting, but if you enjoy a glimpse into the way crooks operate, told with detachment and a touch of humor, it's pretty entertaining.Karen DiCilia is the widow of a mob boss in Florida; her jealous husband left a proviso in his will that strips her o...

As with most Leonard books, the ride is so much more satisfying than the end. Elmore Leonard could literally end this book after any chapter and I wouldn't care. It was a great story and the characters spew out wonderful lines page after page. He is a poet of street language. Really enjoyed it.

I first read this book years ago, and then tossed it aside, not realizing its important place in the Leonard canon: It's the first one he set in Florida, a state he'd been visiting for years and a place where he'd bought his mother a hotel to run. Leonard's quirky tale of a swamp-bred psychopath, a robber-turned-dolphin-trainer and a Mafia widow with an odd problem also marked a bridge between Charles Willeford's offbeat Hoke Mosely thrillers and the wackier Carl Hiaasen crime novels that began

Funny dialogue, break-neck pacing, interesting characters, bla bla bla... I'm having problems finding new ways to describe "good Elmore Leonard books" which is very ironic cuz Leonard himself had, at this point, found a good way to capitalize on his strengths on and churn out roughly the same book every year but making it a damn good time with every outing. Special note to the appearance of Roland Crowe, first appearance of a member of the Florida Crowes, those delightful screw-ups from Justifie...

2018 reread: Another book that I loved even more on a reread. It's a toss up which 1980 Elmore Leonard book I like more, this or City Primeval. I'm trying to avoid recency bias so I won't say it's this one.A vindictive husband leaves his wife with incredible strictures in his will. Several people are attempting to bilk her out of her money or to save her. It all unravels in Leonard's inimitable style. Just great character and dialog driven noir.

An interesting premise: A mob boss's wife is left a fortune after he suddenly keels over. The catch is she can't ever be with another man, and he has his wiseguys around to make sure she remains faithful. Of course it's not long before the wiseguys start sniffing around the pile of dough. Leonard's good characters and dialog keep the story moving, but the plot unravels a little bit, and the end was unsatisfying for me.

What a good read, I couldn't put the book down - unless forced to by work!It is easy to read, characters are either like able or you want to have a shower to remove the creepiness of them. The revenge of a dead husband putting a chastity belt on his 44 year old wife and the story that unfolds.Read it, enjoy all the way to the very last page!

Unsatisfying. This has put me off Leonard for a while - can't be bothered reading the next two I had lined up, I'll have to wait till the bad taste this one left in my mouth has dissipated - there were no likable characters in this and it seemed to end with no definitive resolution. In fact, I hated it.

Another great story from Elmore Leonard. With the mob involved, a beautiful widow in need of help, and with the help of a drifter and ex-con, she fights back. Leonard was one of the finest writers of crime fiction, and in his heyday I would say the finest.

The actual plot was pretty good, and there are some laugh-out-loud moments, but I found the writing a bit jarring.

like character of Jimmy Cap pictorialized in passage, 'Roland didn't care anything about historical sites. He got a plate of fettuccini with clam sauce, a big glass of red and some rolls, and went over to sit with Jimmy Capotorto in the Florida room that was full of plants hanging all over, like a green-house.' 'Roland said, "It's a bitch, huh, something like this? Man, you never know." 'Jimmy Cap had finished eating. He was smoking a cigar, looking out at the Bay, five miles across to South Mia...

Now this is a solid Elmore Leonard novel. This book has it all, a hitman, the mob, a mysterious woman and a man in over his head. All classic Leonard tropes, but when he can fit them all together in a clever, entertaining way, damn, no one does it better.The plot follows Karen, a woman stuck in a loveless marriage to a mobster. But when he dies she finds herself trapped in a clause of his will forbidding her from being with anyone else hence she loses her millions of dollars. In walks our Leonar...

When I get stuck in a reading rut, I usually go to Elmore Leonard, whose novels are dependable, quick reads that I almost always enjoy. Like most authors, there's a similarity to his works, and he fell into traps when he got lazy, but it's not like he can write Out of Sight every time.One of these traps he fell into was "pick a job, and somehow drop a criminal into it." This is how we got the high diver in Tishomingo Blues or psychic in Riding the Rap. It worked in Get Shorty with the movie prod...

A kind of middling Florida-set Leonard novel, about a new widow who learns that her husband put into the will that she should be celibate (to honor him) till she dies. There's an off-white knight who wants to save her and a bad guy who wants to trap her even more, and they sort of fight it out with the usual Leonard hijinks. It's good enough, but there's something unclear here-- there are a lot of moments when you feel like you don't quite know the widow yet, and at the end of the novel, after a...

The problem with this story was primarily that the main antagonist was dull. His whole plan was that he thought he was going to low key charm his way into some money, except he wasn't actually charming and really only predator. Now, unfortunately, it's become clear that a lot of these bad, immoral, dumb people actually do succeed way to often with this sort of thing, but that doesn't make the story any more interesting. It might have been passable a hundred pages shorter, but instead it just dra...

Definitely upper-tier Leonard, a return to form after the disappointing City Primeval. Gold Coast is funny, suspenseful, well-written, and surprising. It also has a nice little narrative trick built into it that makes you sympathize more with one character simply because he’s the main one. This trick gets you by the ending. Recommended. 4 stars.

Classic Elmore Leonard. Very flawed characters, almost all criminals, more cunning than smart. Tons of double crossing. Lots of victims - most of them also perpetrators.I enjoyed this book - a bit dated and sexist, but still a fun read. A mafia boss dies and leaves his wife a lot of money. But the money comes with strings. It also comes with a few small time criminals trying to get their hands on the money. Lot of bumbling intrigue and a bit of suspense, but a very satisfying ending.

I feel lousy giving to stories to an Elmore Leonard book, because he’s giving me so much enjoyment over decades of reading, but this one is pretty thin. The ending is good, but it seems like he wrote this one on autopilot. Even Frank Mueller reading it didn’t make it that much better.

Good, typical Leonard effort. Solid cast of Leonard type characters, somewhat crazy story line.

Mildly amusing, .like a lot of his early work.

A widowed mob-boss wife held prisoner by trust fund

Now I have a new favorite book.

kind of blah. villain was semi-entertaining, everyone else not so much.