[close] In his nine previous Isaac Sidel novels Jerome Charyn has deconstructed New York City and put it back together again in a brilliant, garish, cubist panorama-where the mayor wears a gun in his pants and duels with bad guys in the streets, where Ping-Pong players make perfect hit men and the phantom of a Roumanian beauty hovers like a Chagall angel over the proceedings. Hailed by critics as the most innovative and daring crime writer of his generation, Jerome Charyn returns with the latest installment of his never-less-than-astounding series.

The Big Guy is running for the White House. Or rather, his self-aggrandizing sometimes partner baseball czar J. Michael Storm is running for president, and taking the mayor of New York along-not for the ride, but for the muscle. Isaac is all muscle. While the Dems throng at the Garden and the pundits watch the polls, the mayor is hitting the streets, investigating a murder and a little fiefdom of corruption.

The killing was by a father of his son. Both were cops. The evidence leads Isaac to the oh-four on Elizabeth Street and its captain, who dares the mayor to keep pressing, and then dares to send shotgun-wielding cops to throw a scare into the Citizen.

The Citizen doesn't scare. Obsessed with the notion that one of his precincts is breeding corruption and murder-and is being protected by someone in national power-the man who would be Veep goes on a campaign and a crusade. What Isaac finds out is how hard his enemies are willing to strike back at him, how high up they really go, and, while the living make their plans for glory, how the dead can come back to life on the violent streets of New York. [close]