Customer Reviews

The Ivory Coast: A Novel

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Fascinating story in an exotic setting. Fleming takes us to the world inhabited by Blacks in 1950's Las Vegas. Here we find the entertainers forbidden to drink at the hotels where they work and the whites who follow them to their after-hours haunts. However, this no set piece of charicactures. Each denizen of Fleming's world has a purpose, and it is bound to collide with someone else. The story moves, ducks, and jives like a manic dance, all leading to a conclusion that is as interesting as it is disturbing. Fleming is a masterful storyteller.

I really wanted to like this book. However, I found it increasingly difficult even to keep reading it. It has a cast of such hateful, self-interested and/or depraved characters; it has so much racism and violence, that it's not even a remotely pleasurable reading experience. Add to that, many anachronisms ("good to go" and "gone south", for example, are two very modern terms not in common usage in the mid-50s) and sloppy copyediting (Spike Lee instead of Spike Jones, names misspelled, countless extra and/or misspelled words) along with famous names repeated over and over, and you have a book with a good premise that simply isn't sufficiently compelling or believable to hold one's interest. Graphically ugly sexual scenes and scenes of horrific racism further detract from what might have been an interesting examination of an era. It may well be that Las Vegas was every bit as crooked and racist as described by author Fleming but without any likeable characters, it's not possible to care much about what happens in this book--particularly with a drug-and-alcohol-addicted hero who seems always to do the wrong thing and who never becomes entirely real. That's unfortunate, because Fleming's pedigree is impressive. But a good book requires more than just a lot of research. It also requires a beating heart and The Ivory Coast's major failing is its lack of that very thing.

In 1955, trumpet player Deacon rides the bus from Chicago to Las Vegas. He barely disembarks from the bus when Mo "the man" Weiner pages him. Deacon knows you always respond when someone called "the man" wants to see you and immediately does. Mo orders Deacon to drive two hours to Shipton Wells where he is to warn someone to go back to Los Angeles. Deacon does the job, but someone else shoots the man anyway. Deacon grabs the man's suitcase and asks Anita, a waitress he just met, to stash it for him.

Deacon realizes everyone in Vegas tries to manipulate the odds. Mo is the front for the Chicago and Los Angeles mobs and plans to make a killing on a new casino, THE IVORY COAST, that he will open in the Black West Side of town. Worthless Worthington Jones is his front with his own contrivance for a killing. Police chief Haney has his schemes to trump everyone else. All three intersect with Deacon and that suitcase he lifted, making life dangerous for the horn player.

Though Deacon trusting Anita with the booty he snatched seems strained, readers will find Charles Flemming's debut novel a fascinating look at 1950's Las Vegas. The story line is so rich with history that it makes it possible for the audience to roll with high rollers and observe the Black stars unable to eat or sleep where they performed. THE IVORY COAST is a tremendous historical intrigue that is at its finest with its fifties texture that fans of mid-twentieth century tales will enjoy.

Harriet Klausner

I was impressed by some of the historical detail and entertained by the setting and some of the sleazy Vegas characters but mostly I felt dissapointed. The last 40 pages are a convoluted mess and the "big secret" that was alluded to all along turned out to be a dissapointing dud straight from a bad parody of a Fellini film.

But Flemming does have a good writing style and I did care about most of the characters for a majority of the narrative.

Definitely undone by "Third Act Problems".