Joe Wambaugh is best known for his brutally honest early works centered on the LAPD -- The Blue Knight, The New Centurions and some of his other 1970s novels. This isn't one of those. More's the pity.Winston Farlowe, the protagonist -- it's impossible to call him "the hero" -- is drinking his disability pension after being cut loose from the Newport Beach PD after a line-of-service injury. Tess Binder, a Newport Beach serial trophy wife, tracks him down at the dive bar he haunts and winds him up in a relationship based equally on alcohol and sex, then tells him someone's trying to kill her. Naturally, he tries to fix the problem, and complications ensue.The author is skilled at creating characters that feel all-too-human and act in ways you'd expect beings such as they would act. The dialog generally feels authentic except in one aspect. He captures not only the nation's 1990 zeitgeist, but the particular vibe of the wealthiest enclave in Orange County as I remember it back at the end of the era when semi-normal people could still afford to live there (precariously). The crime-related plot is suitably devious though not particularly original (it's a variation on Double Indemnity).However, the overall work is lazy and sloppy. The crime story is nowhere near the main plot; the first whisper of it doesn't appear until page 160 or so of the paperback. Vast numbers of pages are taken up by incidentals or repetition. This book could easily be a hundred pages shorter and would benefit greatly from the trim. The dialog fail happens repeatedly in Win's favorite bar; it descends into banter that's far too sharp and quick for real drunks to even attempt, much less pull off. It's like Cheers: West Coast Edition.The two main characters embody the largest failings. The main plot involves watching Win drink to vast excess over and over again, both alone and in the company of fellow hopeless alcoholics. As has been noted in other reviews, the boozing is nonstop to the point of absurdity. For example: on the night of Win's first date with Tess, he downs upwards of twenty double vodkas as well as various other drinks (I finally lost track), but somehow he not only doesn't end up comatose or dead, he can apparently still perform sexually. He's equally likely to drive cars and boats while profoundly drunk. Win's created this problem for himself and is in deep denial about it, even though it's patently obvious to every other character around him. As a result, it's extremely difficult to muster any sympathy for Win or care much about his ultimate fate.Similarly, Tess is a preening, entitled gold-digger who believes "injustice" is what happens when the third wealthy ex-husband refuses to breach the pre-nup and gives her the old Mercedes as part of the settlement. Her peers are no better. In fact, nearly all the female characters in this novel are either shrill harpies feeding on the entrails of their blameless mates, or ruthless predators stalking the rich men of Newport Beach, who are helpless prisoners of the whims of their own penises. It's hard to feel anything but contempt or disgust for Tess, no matter how much of a male-fantasy sex machine the author sets her up to be.So with no viable main plot or relatable main characters, this is an exercise in the skilled creation of milieu (the only reason this got that second star). Whether that's worth 350 pages of your time is something you'll have to decide for yourself.I read this many, many years ago, promptly forgot about it, and picked it up again while I was looking at how other authors had incorporated Orange County into their crime novels. I now know several things I will absolutely not do.If you haven't encountered Wambaugh before, go back to his early works and see him at his peak. If you've read all the rest of his works and somehow skipped The Golden Orange, don't feel as though you've missed much. Move along, there's nothing much to see here.
This is not so much a mystery as one man's dissent ito total cynicism and ruin. The whole book is a bit of a depressing broadside against Orange County, California, which is a lot more than what is portrayed in this book and I dare say while I think there are some women who go out of their way to track down ad marry vulnerable rich men, this book portrays them both as one-dimensional and rather pathetic beings. Winnie is a former police officer who apparently has sloshed his brain out on his various alcoholic binges. He doesn't believe that he's an alcoholic but there is something that is telling him that he is. So if he is so blind about who and what he is, its not really unreasonable to see him fall for a woman he knows is smarter, craftier and 'higher class' than he is. And falls he does: hook, line and sinker.And that's when the book gets rather pathetic because all along I knew something was up. While the twist in the end was good, it wasn't good enough and I found this story filled with one-dimensional characters with no growth, no learning, no potential. There are better books about sad drunks who fall into a hole and remain there.
What do You think about The Golden Orange (1991)?
Not the cover of the edition I read. My first JW read and not bad but well within the expectations of the genre(SoCal-detective-whodunit lifestyle). He does get onshore and offshore confused once, also East and West. There's also an alarming amount of boozing in this book. Much like "The Gold Coast". I'll finish it this afternoon but I think I've got the end twist(s) figured out. We'll see. It was a treat to begin the book and start reading about Balboa-Newport-Laguna Beach. The old stomping grounds of a couple of old friends who now live in San Diego. When I visited them in '07 we took a drive up the coast as far as Newport and ate lunch at the Crab Cooker. That's the closest I've been to LA except for the Airport. Took the ferry and everything. Beautiful but crowded with buildings. Every-square-inch. A few more thoughts... JW steals from "Dial M for Murder" in one brief vignette and more broadly from "Body Heat" for the whole plot. Also, the end fails to resolve a number of plot questions/threads/mysteries. I don't like that.
—Chris Gager
