SECRET ISAAC

by Jerome Charyn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 1978

Further adventures (the fourth volume) of Isaac Sidel, First Deputy Police Commissioner--a Jewish sore thumb against the grain of the grand Irish lads of the NYPD. Isaac has gone incognito, living like a bum in a Times Square hotel in order to get a fix upon the big boys behind the flourishing pross-n'-pimp biz: someone, it's clear, is pulling a main string. Intrigued, then a little in love, with a sweet young hooker thing named Annie Powell (she has a mean-looking letter ""D"" scratched into one side of her face), Isaac finally picks up the trail of one Dermott Bride, a Dublin-residing former protegÉ of Isaac's. (Isaac got Dermott into Columbia University once upon a time.) Cut to Ireland for some rough stuff among Dermott's myrmidons--all of whom are former New York cops, all Irish, all retired. Isaac hies back to the Big Apple and pulls the thread even more insistently: the whole upper echelon of the police begins to give with the strain. Even the Mayor is implicated. It's all very busy and very ugly, as always when pseudo-tough Charyn takes to the streets of New York (last year's The Franklin Scare showed his better, more honestly sentimental side). Add the special annoyance of some literary self-consciousness à la Joyce in the Dublin sequences, and this installment is definitely only for those who've found Isaac's previous escapades a grisly laff riot.

Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Arbor House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION