The acclaimed author of the intensely powerful novel Pretty Birds,Scott Simon now gives us a story that is both laugh-out-loud funny and heart-piercing?as sprawling and brawling as Chicago, where politics is a contact sport.
Random House
March 2008
On Sale: March 11, 2008
432 pages ISBN: 1400065577 EAN: 9781400065578 Hardcover Add to Wish List
The acclaimed author of the intensely powerful novel
Pretty Birds,Scott Simon now gives us a story
that is both laugh-out-loud funny and heart-piercing–as
sprawling and brawling as Chicago, where politics is a
contact sport.
The mayor of Chicago is found in his
office late at night, sitting in his boxer shorts, facedown
dead in a pizza. The mayor was a hero and a rascal: dynamic,
charming, ingenious, corruptible, and a masterly
manipulator. The city mourns. But it’s discovered that the
mayor was murdered–shortly after he may have begun to squeal
on some of his colleagues at City Hall. Over the next four
days, police race to find the mayor’s killer, while the
politicians who bemoan his passing scramble for his throne.
At the center is Sundaran “Sunny” Roopini,
forty-eight, alderman of the Forty-eighth Ward, and
vice-mayor. Sunny is an Indian immigrant, a restaurant
owner, and a recent widower. He is getting tired of politics
and wants to hold on just long enough to do the best for his
two restive teenage daughters. But as acting interim mayor
for a few days, Sunny must deal with forty-nineotheraldermen who have their own clashing
ambitions. How will Sunny do what’s best for both his
family and city in a time of crisis?
As The Last
Hurrah embodied urban politics for a previous generation,
Windy City captures politics in the multiethnic
tumult of today’s big city, where a stalled subway raises
fears of a terrorist attack and smoke-filled rooms are
abolished by no-smoking statutes. The story takes a raft of
colorful characters–pinky-ringed pols, pious reformers,
money-grubbers, and wheeler-dealers of every creed, color,
and proclivity–through City Hall corridors, neighborhood
restaurants and clubs, weddings, sex scandals, gospel
churches, police stations, and sting operations to deliver
an ending that is unexpectedly noble. Windy
City is a roller coaster of a novel that dips and soars
through the amusement park of politics. With echoes of
Primary Colors and Thank You for Smoking,
Windy City will win votes as the best political novel
in many years. Its personal story–about a flawed, decent man
thrust suddenly under hot lights–will also win hearts.
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