Gold Coast Read online

  Washington Post Book World

  “Leonard is the best in the business: His dialogue snaps, his characters are more alive than most of the people you meet on the street, and his twisting plots always resolve themselves with a no-nonsense plausibility.”

  Newsday

  “The finest thriller writer alive.”

  Village Voice

  “Leonard’s cinematic grasp of scene and setting, his ability to arouse within us a helpless sympathy for even the lowest of his characters, his quirky pacing and plot twists, and his sly humor and artfully oddball prose sear our eyeballs and keep the pages turning.”

  Miami Herald

  “The grand master of the crime genre . . . The foremost mystery writer in America today.”

  Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “A giant among writers of crime fiction.”

  Columbus Dispatch

  “No one can beat Elmore Leonard when it comes to mordant humor and shockingly bizarre situations.”

  Orlando Sentinel

  “Leonard remains the uncontested master of the crime thriller. . . . The thing that distances Elmore Leonard from his legion of imitators (apart from the inimitable style) is his seemingly inexhaustible store of hapless scoundrels and his ability to weave the threads of their sorry lives, twisted ambitions, and desperate dreams into a marvelous tapestry that depicts, better than any sociological study could ever hope to capture, the seamy underside of modern life. It’s a talent deceptive in its apparent simplicity.”

  Tampa Tribune

  “When Elmore Leonard’s people start talking, I can’t help myself, I have to listen.”

  Lawrence Block

  “Elmore Leonard can’t write ’em fast enough.”

  Bergen Record

  Books by Elmore Leonard

  The Bounty Hunters

  The Law at Randado

  Escape from Five Shadows

  Last Stand at Saber River

  Hombre

  The Big Bounce

  The Moonshine War

  Valdez Is Coming

  Forty Lashes Less One

  Mr. Majestyk

  52 Pickup

  Swag

  Unknown Man #89

  The Hunted

  The Switch

  Gunsights

  Gold Coast

  City Primeval

  Split Images

  Cat Chaster

  Stick

  LaBrava

  Glitz

  Bandits

  Touch

  Freaky Deaky

  Killshot

  Get Shorty

  Maximum Bob

  Rum Punch

  Pronto

  Riding the Rap

  Out of Sight

  Cuba Libre

  The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories

  Be Cool

  Pagan Babies

  Tishomingo Blues

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  GOLD COAST. Copyright © 1980 by Elmore Leonard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books;.

  EPub Edition NOVEMBER © 2002 ISBN: 9780061835513

  First HarperTorch paperback printing: October 2002

  06 07 08 09 10

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