The Gold Coast
by Nelson Demille
When I saw that Nelson DeMille’s The Gold Coast is 500 pages, I almost passed on it. I’m glad I didn’t. I’d expected another routine thriller, and I don’t have patience for those that exceed 300 pages. To my great surprise, it is a real novel, only the second of all those I’ve sampled the past few years that transcends the genre. The other is Tami Hoag’s A Thin Dark Line.
The story is simple: a fortyish blue-blood lawyer’s life is forever changed when a mafia don moves next door. On the other hand, the characterizations are complex and sharp, the Machiavellian overtones compelling, the prose and dialogue crackling, the wit biting. The narrative is so smooth it reads more like 400 pages, although I did feel it could have been trimmed a little.
My only quibble is not understanding the protagonist’s love for his distant wife, an heiress, of more than 20 years. Although love itself is a great mystery and a lover can be a stranger, as Billy Joel put it in song, I just don’t understand the attraction except in terms of the physical, which wanes rather quickly in real life.
Even given the fact that the novel is about the mystery of life and love, I still feet something is missing in that aspect. Perhaps background on the origin of the relationship would have helped. The novel is a first person account, which eliminates part of the mystery, but it is also what makes it a cut above the standard thriller. It is about the human condition first and foremost, and that is what I respect most in literature.
The title refers to an area on Long Island’s north shore where the likes of the Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, Morgans, Woolworths and the fictional Jay Gatsby had huge estates. The places don't even have a regular address. Mail is addressed to the name of the estate, Alhambra and Stanhope in the novel.
Today few of them remain or are privately owned. Change is a another of the novel’s major themes. DeMille, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was born in Queens, NY and graduated from Hofstra University. He has 26 books in print and several have been adapted to film or television or are in development.
The Gold Coast was published in 1990. The characters return many years later in The Gate House (2008). Although I do not read more than one work of a mystery/thriller author, I will be tempted to read The Gate House if it ever crosses my path. Trying to guess which works will stand the test of time is always shaky. My hunch is The Gold Coast will be respected for a long time. On a scale of five, four. Kudos, sir.
