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God's Rat

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I've always been an avid fan of coming of age sagas in the classic American tradition of. Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield. Abie Isaacs the fifteen-year-old protagonist in Michael Bookman's contribution to this genre, God's Rat, is in their league. Abie experiences his growing pains on the squalid streets of the Jewish east side early in the last Century as a member of a violent street gang, The Stanton Street Boys.

The story pivots on the Rosenthal/ Becker Affair which is a sticky wicket still hotly debated by historians ninety years after the fact. As a history buff I can attest Bookman has done his homework.

A notoriously crooked cop, NYC Police Lieutenant Charles Becker, is convicted and ultimately executed for masterminding the murder of the gangster Herman Rosenthal. Rosenthal is murdered because his talking to the press threatens to overthrow the "System", a deeply entrenched coalition of Tammany power brokers, the police, and the underworld. That is the part everybody accepts. The debate rages over whether Lieutenant Becker was guilty as changed, or framed by both a yellow press who labeled him "the killer cop" and a power mad DA, Charles Seymour Whitman, who knowingly prosecuted an innocent man as a necessary stepping stone on the road to become New York's next Governor. Bookman embraces the latter version.

In God's Rat, a seamless mélange of fact and fiction, Abie Isaacs overhears his mother's former pimp, Morris "The Pimp" Schiff and Tammany heavy Senator Big Tim Sullivan plotting the murder of Herman Rosenthal and the framing of Lieutenant Becker. Abie, in spite of his own gangster scruples, feels compelled to warn Rosenthal. As a result he earns the potentially lethal epithet "Rat" and his world is never the same.

Bookman's poignant depiction of a besieged adolescent bad boy, who finds the capacity to understand, forgive and change, is heart rending and convincing.

The writing is fast paced and intelligent; the descriptions, vivid; the tone wry; the dialogue real. You see, feel, and hear the gangsters, the pimps and the whores. God's Rat presents a Lower East Side you probably never knew existed. And now that you know, you'll never forget. Steve Collins

From the first line of God's Rat, Michael Bookman draws his readers into the emotional state of its protagonist; the dark environment of New York's lower Eastside; and into a plot whose characters will remain with you forever. No words can adequately describe the power of Mr. Bookman's prose...riveting, mesmerizing, and fascinating to the very last word.

The book maintains historical accuracy while capturing all the nuances of the era, the early NYPD corruption and the little known Jewish gangster world. You will grow to love young Abie Issacs; loath Morris Schiff; have pity for Lena the Lake; and be possessed with morbid curiosity surrounding the execution of Police Lieutenant Charles Becker.

Mr. Bookman creates a colorful tapestry of subplots with interesting twists and quirky characters. Who was Abie Issacs father? Why did the prison warden need to execute one of his own? These and more you WILL want to know. It will keep you turning page-after-page.

If you want to read about earthy real people and become spellbound by an unforgettable story of love, greed, lost innocence and betrayal...God's Rat by Michael Bookman is the book for you. Don't wait for the movie-read it now!