Maria's Girls - Softcover

Jerome Charyn was born in the Bronx in 1937. He attended Columbia College and was a founding editor of the Dutton Review and the executive editor of Fiction. He has twenty-eight novels to his credit, including the Isaac Sidel Quartets. Charyn is a Guggenheim Fellow whose novel Darlin' Bill received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1996 he was named an Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. He lives in Paris and teaches film history and the aesthetics of crime fiction at the American University of Paris. His work has been published in twelve languages.

Seasoned mystery writer Charyn ( The Good Policeman ) unleashes another Dantesque vision of the hell that is contemporary New York City. Police Commissioner Isaac Sidel plans to fight corruption in the city's public schools with the help of his new right-hand man, Carollsp ok Brent. But Brent, although married to "the second-richest woman in New York," is in debt to the mob and falls into the hands of Sidel's longtime nemesis, Sal Rubino. Brent's vigorish gets paid off, but Sidel is gunned down. While the "Commish" recovers with the help of lime jello, dreams of baseball and visits from his old friend Margaret Tolstoy, events in his department come to a boil. Brent's wife is drawn into the web of mob-connected Carlos Maria Montalban, flashy and venal superintendent of the Lower East Side school district. Soon the close links between the city's archdiocese, government, high society, police force and crime organizations are exposed, and a shootout between mob families at a Central Park baseball game leaves few survivors. Charyn's newest dark and frenetic tale sings with the lingo of the streets, his trademark rapid-fire dialogue and surprise relationships.
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