Citizen Sidel [Hardcover]

Jerome Charyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In contrast to the bleak and poignant atmosphere of his most recent Isaac Sidel book, 1997's El Bronx, Charyn offers knockabout farce in this latest adventure of the gun-toting New York mayor. It may take readers a few pages to get into the surprising mood, but by the third or fourth time Sidel gets knocked on his keister they'll will be ready for anything?even a vision of Sidel tucking his ever-present Glock into a pair of orange pants in order to impersonate an Isaac Babel character named Benya Krik. The novel is full of smart jokes: a luxurious nursing home is called Riverrun and a trained rat is named Raskolnikov. Mayor Sidel has been chosen as the vice-presidential candidate by the Democrats, to add muscle to the ticket headed by J. Michael Storm, baseball czar and former student radical. Up against Isaac and Storm are ruthless Republicans, crooked cops and corrupt FBI agents, deadly Bronx gangsters, kamikaze assassins and an 85-year-old Romanian once known as the Butcher of Bucharest. " 'A period in the right place is like a hammer in the heart.' That's what Babel said," a literature teacher tells Sidel. Charyn proves once again?with energy, imagination and perfect periods galore?that he knows how to swing a hammer like nobody's business.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

New York City mayor Isaac Sidel returns in this tenth installment in Charyn's quirky crime series (after El Bronx, LJ 2/1/97). This time around, the gun-toting former police commissioner is running for vice president of the United States?that is, when the "Big Guy" is not being sidetracked by his investigation of a corrupt police department and the possible murder of a cop by the man's own father. Toss in the precocious daughter of Sidel's running mate, the irresistible double agent Margaret Tolstoy, and a trained rat called Raskolnikov, and you have a surreal romp through a bizarre yet recognizable New York. Charyn has a light, readable style and manages to make the strangest things almost plausible. Recommended for public libraries with Charyn fans.
-?Laurel Bliss, New Haven, CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press; First Edition edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089296605X
• ISBN-13: 978-0892966059
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,632,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in the mean streets of the Bronx and have remained a city wolf, dividing my time between New York City and Paris.

I grew up reading comic books and watching movies; you can see their influences in my books. I started writing novels at the age of eleven; Amazon carries 40+ titles, fiction and non-fiction.

For the past fourteen years I taught film at the American University of Paris.

I love Emily Dickinson's poems and William Faulkner's novels. I also love Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," which has the feel of a novel. (I wrote a book about Tarantino, "Raised by Wolves," after the film's release.)

My novel "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson," published in 2010, inspired a community of more than 3500 Emily Dickinson Facebook fans dedicated to the poet's place in the 21st century.

"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" is now available in paperback in a reading group edition with online reading guide.

My most recent book, "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil," was released on March 8, 2011, part of the Yale University Press series on American Icons. More than 1000 fans are already registered on its Facebook page.

I invite you to join me on Facebook for "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" or "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil." Or visit my website: www.jeromecharyn.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If You Like Jimmy Breslin, August 18, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Citizen Sidel (Hardcover)

Finding a new Author is good, finding an Author that has written several dozen books that extend the new find is fantastic. The first work I read by Mr. Jerome Charyn was, "The Black Swan". That particular work was the second volume of his memoirs documenting his youth in the Bronx, and it was great reading. "Citizen Sidel", is a work of fiction that takes place around the Democratic Convention and its aftermath in New York City. The book is irreverent, has razor sharp rapid-fire dialogue, and gives no quarter to any of the topics it harpoons.

Any scandal that has taken place in the political arena is tame in comparison to the variety of activities, up to and including Capital Crimes that this Presidential run includes. There is a hitter stalking one of the Burroughs by the name of Tolstoy. A notorious Rumanian octogenarian is living in luxury in Virginia, as a guest on one of the competing US Agencies, and these are only two of several dozen outrageous characters. A 12 year old who is a speech script doctor, a potential First Lady who loathes her Daughter, as the latter is more popular.

Add to the individuals a FBI that makes Hoover's version seem like a child's game, and then toss in The CIA, The Secret Service, New York City's Finest, Gangs, and self-proclaimed super-heroes, and you begin to get an idea of this tale. While it is said that all humor contains some truth, this book is a great deal of fun to read. Jerome Charyn is a very talented writer with an insightful savage wit. Enjoy!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Different - and not for everyone - but Fun!, September 16, 2000

By 

D. Wright (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Citizen Sidel (Hardcover)

Charyn's idiosyncratic adventure crosses the headlong rush of a classic noir thriller with the earnest fantasy of a 12 year old kid. The result is delightful, if you're ready to come out and play, but no doubt frustrating for fans of gritty realism. If you enjoyed Martin Amis' Night Train or Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, you should try the Sidel books.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Huh?, September 3, 2000

By 

Author Bill Peschel "Writers Gone Wild" (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Citizen Sidel (Hardcover)

What are we to make of a New York City mayor who packs a Glock, wrestles corrupt cops and crooked politicians at the same time he is running as second banana in a presidential campaign? You get Issac Sidel, a.k.a. the Big Guy, a.k.a. the Citizen, and the funhouse world created by Jerome Charyn, once of the Bronx, now of Paris.

"Citizen Sidel" is a small book -- less than 220 pages -- but Sidel's a loose cannon who runs everywhere except off the page. He barely keeps ahead of the other characters, who are equally bizarre: the 12-year-old daughter of his running mate, the love of his life who's in bed with the president, and the son of a police officer, once thought dead, who resurrects himself as the protector of an inner-city neighborhood, accompanied by a large rat named Raskolnikov. Sidel himself is a thoroughbred on amphetimines, barely keeping ahead of those who want to see his campaign derailed. He moves in a shadow world of plots and counter-plots that may or may not have a tenuous link in reality.

A lot of "Citizen Sidel" has that feeling of unrealism. Watch Sidel lose a fistfight against a political operative, then give his acceptance speech on national television, see him fly over the streets of New York, looking for a 12-year-old tagger, see him campaign in America's heartland, one voter at a time, without anyone from the media nearby. He tries to rescue a World War II Romanian dictator from an asylum and his running mate's daughter from kidnappers and accuses nearly everybody of secretly working for someone else.

In the end, "Citizen Sidel" reads like an art house movie that seems profound until you walk out of the theater and try to make sense of it.