The Gold Coast
Nelson DeMille, 1990
Grand Central Publishing
626 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446360852
Summary
Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America.
Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief. Bellarosa draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world.
Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, and laced with sexual passion and suspense, The Gold Coast is Nelson DeMille's captivating story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, Brad Matthews, Michael
Weaver, Ellen Kay
• Birth—August 22, 1943
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A. Hofstra University
• Awards—Estabrook Award
• Currently—lives on Long Island, New York
Nelson DeMille has a dozen bestselling novels to his name and over 30 million books in print worldwide, but his beginnings were not so illustrious. Writing police detective novels in the mid-1970s, DeMille created the pseudonym Jack Cannon: "I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday," DeMille told fans in a 2000 chat.
Between 1966 and 1969, Nelson DeMille served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. When he came home, he finished his undergraduate studies (in history and political science), then set out to become a novelist. "I wanted to write the great American war novel at the time," DeMille said in an interview with January magazine. "I never really wrote the book, but it got me into the writing process." A friend in the publishing industry suggested he write a series of police detective novels, which he did under a pen name for several years.
Finally DeMille decided to give up his day job as an insurance fraud investigator and commit himself to writing full time—and under his own name. The result was By the Rivers of Babylon (1978), a thriller about terrorism in the Middle East. It was chosen as a Book of the Month Club main selection and helped launch his career. "It was like being knighted," said DeMille, who now serves as a Book of the Month Club judge. "It was a huge break."
DeMille followed it with a stream of bestsellers, including the post-Vietnam courtroom drama Word of Honor (1985) and the Cold War spy-thriller The Charm School (1988) Critics praised DeMille for his sophisticated plotting, meticulous research and compulsively readable style. For many readers, what made DeMille stand out was his sardonic sense of humor, which would eventually produce the wisecracking ex-NYPD officer John Corey, hero of Plum Island (1997) and The Lion's Game (2000).
In 1990 DeMille published The Gold Coast, a Tom Wolfe-style comic satire that was his attempt to write "a book that would be taken seriously." The attempt succeeded, in terms of the critics' response: "In his way, Mr. DeMille is as keen a social satirist as Edith Wharton," wrote the New York Times book reviewer. But he returned to more familiar thrills-and-chills territory in The General's Daughter, which hit no. 1 on the New York Times' Bestseller list and was made into a movie starring John Travolta. Its hero, army investigator Paul Brenner, returned in Up Country (2002), a book inspired in part by DeMille's journey to his old battlegrounds in Vietnam.
DeMille's position in the literary hierarchy may be ambiguous, but his talent is first-rate; there's no questioning his mastery of his chosen form. As a reviewer for the Denver Post put it, "In the rarefied world of the intelligent thriller, authors just don't get any better than Nelson DeMille."
Extras
(From a Barnes & Noble interview)
• DeMille composes his books in longhand, using soft-lead pencils on legal pads. He says he does this because he can't type, but adds, "I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it's done in handwriting."
• In addition to his novels, DeMille has written a play for children based on the classic fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin."
• DeMille says on his web site that he reads mostly dead authors—"so if I like their books, I don't feel tempted or obligated to write to them." He mentions writing to a living author, Tom Wolfe, when The Bonfire of the Vanities came out; but Wolfe never responded. "I wouldn't expect Hemingway or Steinbeck to write back—they're dead. But Tom Wolfe owes me a letter," DeMille writes.
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is what he said:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read this book in college, as many of my generation did, and I was surprised to discover that it said things about our world and our society that I thought only I had been thinking about, i.e., the ascendancy of mediocrity. It was a relief to discover that there was an existing philosophy that spoke to my half-formed beliefs and observations. (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The Gold Coast'' glitter is Nelson DeMille's sharp evocation of the vulpine Bellarosa and of Sutter, a wonderfully sardonic, self-mocking man betrayed by a midlife crisis. In his way, Mr. DeMille is as keen a social satirist as Edith Wharton....The novel bogs down only when Mr. DeMille insists—all too frequently—on ending chapters with heavy-handed portents. The reader does just fine without them.
Joanne Kaufman - New York Times
What happens to a priggish, WASPy, disillusioned Wall Street lawyer when a Mafia crime boss moves into the mansion next door in his posh Long Island neighborhood? He ends up representing the gangster on a murder rap and even perjures himself so the mafioso can be released on $5 million bail. That's the premise of DeMille's (The Charm School) bloated, unpersuasive thriller. Attorney John Sutter has problems that would daunt even Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby. His marriage is crumbling, despite kinky sex games with his self-centered wife, Susan, who's the mistress of his underworld client Frank Bellarosa. The IRS is after Sutter, and his law firm wants to dump him. As a sardonic morality tale of one man's self-willed disintegration, the impact is flattened by its elitist narrator's patrician tones. A comic courtroom scene and some punches at the end, however, redeem the novel somewhat.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. The Gold Coast is in many ways an heir to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. How are Frank Bellarosa and Jay Gatsby alike? How do DeMille’s and Fitzgerald’s depictions of American society differ? How are they similar?
2. Toward the beginning of the novel, Frank Bellarosa says to John, “In this country, I see the kids getting more interested in the old ways…At first they don’t want to be Italian, then they get more Italian when they get older…people are looking for something. Because maybe American culture doesn’t have some things that people need.” What do you think Bellarosa means by this? What might American culture lack?
3. Toward the middle of the novel, Susan asks John, “So, how will we treat Mr. Bellarosa? As a crass, unprincipled interloper, or as an American success story?” How do Susan and John end up treating Bellarosa? What is your opinion of him?
4. DeMille has said that he believes there is “great affinity, duality between the demise of the ‘old’ Mafia and the old-money WASP world.” Do you agree? Are there parallels between John Sutter’s and Frank Bellarosa’s seemingly opposed worlds?
5. After John and Susan make love on the beach, John muses about F. Scott Fitzerald’s Jay Gatsby and says, “I’m not sure what that green light meant to Jay Gatsby nor what it symbolized beyond the orgiastic future…The green light that I see at the end of Daisy’s vanished pier is not the future; it is the past, and it is the only comforting omen I have ever seen.” What does the “green light” represent to John and why is it important to him? How is John’s “green light” different from Gatsby’s?
6. While sailing with his family around the north coast of Long Island, John says, “I couldn’t help but reflect on the ancient idea that land is security and sustenance, that land should never be sold or divided. But even if that were true today, it were true only as an ideal, not a practicality.” Why is the “ancient idea” of land ownership so important to John? What does he fear will happen after all the Gold Coast land has been sold and divided?
7. After John gets in trouble with the IRS, he says, “It was then, I suppose, that a strange thing began to happen to me: I started to lose faith in the system.” Does this moment in the novel constitute a turning point for John? How do John’s notions about law, society, and justice begin to shift here?
8. Bellarosa quotes Machiavelli many times throughout the course of the novel and he
seems to believe that most people are driven by their desire for power. Do you agree? Who has power in this novel and what gives them this power – is it money, respectability, force?
9. Bellarosa is in many ways a hard-edged criminal, but both John and Susan admit to being seduced by him. What is seductive about him and why are both John and Susan so taken with him?
10. John makes a surprising choice during Bellarosa’s murder trial. Reflecting on his decision, he says, “The history of the world is filled with dead martyrs who would not compromise. I used to admire them. Now I think that most of them were probably very foolish.” Do you think John made a smart decision during Bellarosa’s trial or do you think he could have or should have acted differently?
11. What do you make of Susan Sutter? How do you understand her actions at the end of the novel?
12. At the end of the novel, John says: “There is an ebb and flow in all human events, there is a building up and a tearing down, there are brief enchanted moments in history and in the short lives of men and women, there is wonder and there is cynicism, there are dreams that can come true, and dreams that can’t.” What do you make of the ending of the novel? Does DeMille leave us with a bleak or hopeful vision for the future?
13. The Gold Coast was written in 1990—almost twenty years ago. Do you think this novel’s depiction of American society is still relevant today?
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