The Justice Department hires Sidel’s new chauffer to spy on the New York Police Department’s commissioner
Joey Barbarossa likes being a cop, because it makes dealing drugs easier. Any time a fellow pusher gives him trouble, Joey’s detective badge and police-issue Glock have a way of making the problem disappear. He’s also protected by his mentor, NYPD Commissioner Isaac Sidel, but there’s nothing even Sidel can do when Barbarossa makes the mistake of rubbing out a dealer with ties to the Justice Department. For compensation, Justice demands Barbarossa start spying on Sidel, who’s just made him his personal chauffer. The drug-dealing detective can’t say no.
Sidel is preparing for a run at the mayor’s office, but before his campaign kicks off he has to deal with two mob bosses who want him dead. He and Barbarossa don ski masks and start holding up mafia establishments, but as the pressure rises and the friendship frays, the only question is which cop will turn on the other first.
From Publishers Weekly
With his usual, irresistible freight-train momentum, Charyn ( The Good Policeman ) charts a Dante-esque descent through increasingly corrupt circles of New York City as police commissioner Isaac Sidel and his chauffeur-cop Joe Barbarossa confront a familiar roster of hoodlums and politicos in city government, organized crime and the Archdiocese leadership. Barbarossa, a Vietnam vet and drug dealer, is hired by Frederic LeCompte, FBI kingpin and druglord (everyone has multiple occupations--and multifaceted values--in Isaacland), to keep tabs on Sidel. Masked in black stockings, Sidel and Barbarossa rob a series of social clubs belonging to mob leader Jerry DiAngelis, while Sidel's long-time girlfriend, Margaret Tolstoy, takes care of wheelchair-bound rival mobster Sal Rubino. The two warring crime figures (who were not killed in the previous Maria's Girls ) are also quarreling over some carved dolls that serve as priceless antiques and vessels for transporting illegal substances. In Sidel's world, where it's possible to swear and cry or to lie and tell the truth simultaneously, Charyn traces overwrought storylines in foul, funny language while weaving crime and violence, love, honor and betrayal (the question of who Barbarossa really works for is central) into a compelling chaotic unity. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
The Justice Department hires Sidel’s new chauffer to spy on the New York Police Department’s commissioner
Joey Barbarossa likes being a cop, because it makes dealing drugs easier. Any time a fellow pusher gives him trouble, Joey’s detective badge and police-issue Glock have a way of making the problem disappear. He’s also protected by his mentor, NYPD Commissioner Isaac Sidel, but there’s nothing even Sidel can do when Barbarossa makes the mistake of rubbing out a dealer with ties to the Justice Department. For compensation, Justice demands Barbarossa start spying on Sidel, who’s just made him his personal chauffer. The drug-dealing detective can’t say no.
Sidel is preparing for a run at the mayor’s office, but before his campaign kicks off he has to deal with two mob bosses who want him dead. He and Barbarossa don ski masks and start holding up mafia establishments, but as the pressure rises and the friendship frays, the only question is which cop will turn on the other first.
From Publishers Weekly
With his usual, irresistible freight-train momentum, Charyn ( The Good Policeman ) charts a Dante-esque descent through increasingly corrupt circles of New York City as police commissioner Isaac Sidel and his chauffeur-cop Joe Barbarossa confront a familiar roster of hoodlums and politicos in city government, organized crime and the Archdiocese leadership. Barbarossa, a Vietnam vet and drug dealer, is hired by Frederic LeCompte, FBI kingpin and druglord (everyone has multiple occupations--and multifaceted values--in Isaacland), to keep tabs on Sidel. Masked in black stockings, Sidel and Barbarossa rob a series of social clubs belonging to mob leader Jerry DiAngelis, while Sidel's long-time girlfriend, Margaret Tolstoy, takes care of wheelchair-bound rival mobster Sal Rubino. The two warring crime figures (who were not killed in the previous Maria's Girls ) are also quarreling over some carved dolls that serve as priceless antiques and vessels for transporting illegal substances. In Sidel's world, where it's possible to swear and cry or to lie and tell the truth simultaneously, Charyn traces overwrought storylines in foul, funny language while weaving crime and violence, love, honor and betrayal (the question of who Barbarossa really works for is central) into a compelling chaotic unity.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Now that his right-hand-man Manfred Coen is dead, New York Police Commissioner Isaac Sidel (The Good Policeman, etc., etc.) recruits a new lieutenant, Joe Barbarossa, an Irish/Italian/Nez Perc‚ on the outs with Isaac's Justice Department scourge Frederic LeComte ever since he killed Montezuma, a doper turned DEA undercover agent. Posing as the Black Stocking Twins, the Pink Commish and his new sidekick begin knocking off mob social clubs around town--only to find themselves caught in a crossfire between Sal Rubino, current lover of Isaac's old flame Margaret Tolstoy, and mobster Jerry DiAngelis, both of whom are fighting to recover a fabled group of puppets used to smuggle heroin. As usual in Charyn, there's much, much more: Joe falls in love with Isaac's much-married daughter Marilyn the Wild; Montezuma turns up alive after all; and Isaac can move against Mayor Becky Karp's corrupt administration only by entering the mayoral race himself. How will the campaign go? Tune in for the fourth installment of the ``New Isaac Quartet.'' Not for the fainthearted--each of Charyn's baroque anti- procedural fantasies is required reading for all the others--but another bracing immersion in the most sustained attempt to date to create a personal mythology out of a police hero. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.