The Ivory Coast: A Novel

by Charles Fleming

It is 1955 in Las Vegas, and the Chicago mob man Mo Weiner is bankrolling ex-boxer Worthless Worthington Lee and the city's first all-black hotel-casino. The Ivory Coast is rising up from the dust, on the wrong side of town. And out of the shadows steps Deacon, a white horn player with a dark past and a genius for jazz. Mo mistakes him for a hitman. Worthless takes him for a friend. Anita, the mixed-race beauty he falls for, wants him for herself. And Haney, the corrupt and racist cop who runs this hot desert oasis of sin and sand, wants him rubbed out.

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 2001

About the author

Charles Fleming teaches entertainment reporting at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He has written for numerous magazines, including LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the New York Times, and Vanity Fair. He is the author of High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess and the coauthor of The Goomba Diet: Living Large, The Goombas Book of Love, A Goombas Guide to Life, My Lobotomy, Three Weeks in October: The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper. He lives in Los Angeles."

Reviews

[Reco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty good book but it runs a little slow at times.

[An-D Koenig-Feldman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could have been awesome- it had the perfect backdrop- mid 50's Las Vegas- at the heart of the organized crime scene. But I swear this was a rip-off of a movie I've seen (can't remember the title). You didn't get to know the characters' attributes, only their miserable flaws. So I honestly didn't care what happened to them. Not the worst book ever, an ok beach read, but don't expect it to blow you away or anything.