Under the Eye of God (Isaac Sidel Series #11)

by Jerome Charyn

Overview

After decades of madness in the Bronx, Isaac Sidel visits the craziest state in the country


Isaac Sidel is too popular to be America’s vice president. Once the New York Police Department commissioner, he became the most beloved mayor in the city’s history—famous for his refusal to surrender his Glock, and for his habit of disappearing for months at a time to fight crime at street level. So when baseball czar J. Michael Storm asks Sidel to join him on the election’s Democratic ticket, the two wild men romp to an unprecedented landslide. But as the president-elect’s mandate goes off the rails—threatened by corruption, sex, and God knows what else—he tires of being overshadowed by Sidel, and dispatches him to a place from which tough politicians seldom return: Texas.
 
In the Lone Star state, Sidel confronts rogue astrologers, accusations of pedophilia, and a dimwitted assassin who doesn’t know when to take an easy shot. If this Bronx bomber doesn’t watch his step, he risks making vice-presidential history by getting killed on the job.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453270998
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Publication date:	10/30/2012
Series:	Isaac Sidel Series , #11
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jerome Charyn (b. 1937) is the critically acclaimed author of nearly fifty books. Born in the Bronx, he attended Columbia College. After graduating, he took a job as a playground director and wrote in his spare time, producing his first novel, a Lower East Side fairytale called Once Upon a Droshky, in 1964.
 
In 1974, Charyn published Blue Eyes, his first Isaac Sidel mystery. This first in athe so-called Sidel quartet introduced the eccentric, near-mythic Sidel, and his bizarre cast of sidekicks. Although he completed the quartet with Secret Isaac (1978), Charyn followed the character through Under the Eye of God. Charyn, who divides his time between New York and Paris, is also accomplished at table tennis, and once ranked amongst France’s top 10 percent of ping-pong players.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“He writes like greased lightning.” —Time Out  “A realist of the urban nightmare.” —Chicago Tribune “For a couple of decades now, Jerome Charyn has been remaking the detective story.” —The Washington Post Book World

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New York City

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Jerome Charyn:


“He writes like greased lightning.” —Time Out
 
“A realist of the urban nightmare.” —Chicago Tribune
 
“For a couple of decades now, Jerome Charyn has been remaking the detective story.” —The Washington Post Book World

From the Publisher

Isaac Sidel, commissioner of police turned New York City mayor, adds a new title to his résumé: vice president-elect of the United States. Added to the Democratic ticket in 1988 to juice the appeal of J. Michael Storm, a baseball czar with feet of clay (Citizen Sidel, 1999), Isaac swiftly becomes the main story. Crowds and Republicans adore him, ignoring the presidential candidate who took 47 states. Even J. Michael's 12-year-old daughter, Marianna, takes up a staunch position at "Uncle Isaac's" side, prompting fearful echoes of Lolita. Amid all the hoopla, however, deeper currents swirl. A Korean War vet aiming at Isaac during a trip to San Antonio shoots his Secret Service bodyguard instead. Isaac finds David Pearl, the banker who was the longtime silent partner to Isaac's glover father, holed up in Manhattan's Ansonia Hotel brewing heaven knows what dastardly schemes. Isaac falls hard for David's inamorata, Inez, nee Trudy Winckleman, but knows their relationship can't possibly end well. Instead of readying himself for the vice presidency, the Big Man prefers to play out his last days as the mayoral savior of the five boroughs. All around him, meanwhile, career politicians, campaign consultants, political strategists, psychiatrists and astrologers do what they do best: discern conspiracies, take fright and counter them with their own megalomaniac fantasies. All of this uproar in the national hall of mirrors, in which friends are really enemies and enemies are really nuts, perfectly suits Charyn's tropism for antic mythologizing. The new threats arriving on every page are often extended, inflated and dispatched in time for the next paragraph break. The result is a political cocktail almost as fizzy and inventive as The Onion or The Wall Street Journal in which every development is dark, urgent and apocalyptic, and none of it matters a bit.

Kirkus Reviews