Notes on "The Gold Coast" by Elmore Leonard

The Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard is a novel set in Florida involving the widow of a Detroit mobster. This is the second Elmore Leonard novel I have read. The other was Cuba Libre, in which an American cowboy gets swept up in the Spanish American War. Elmore Leonard is known for his dialog, and stories tend to be dialog driven. In this he was a good student of Hemingway. From a sample of two I can say that his heroes tend to be blank slates, there is a distinctly sadistic tendency in the villians, and the love interest tend to have duplicitous interests. Fun reads, though.

- J