The Isaac Sidel Novels Series

A cop and his disgraced mentor attempt to bust a white slavery ringBefore Isaac Sidel adopts him, Manfred Coen is a mutt. A kid from the Bronx, he joins the police academy after his father’s suicide leaves him directionless, and is trudging along like any other cadet when first deputy Sidel, the commissioner’s right hand man, comes looking for a young cop with blue eyes to infiltrate a ring of Polish smugglers. He chooses Coen, and asks the cadet to join his department after he finishes the academy. Working under Sidel means fast promotions, plush assignments, and, when a corruption scandal topples his mentor, the resentment of every rank-and-file detective on the force. Now just an ordinary cop, Coen hears word that his old mentor has a line on a human trafficking operation. When Sidel’s attempt at infiltration fails, he sends in Coen. For Coen, it’s a shot to prove himself and redeem his mentor, but it could cost the blue-eyed cop his life.

When his best friend is killed, Isaac Sidel looks for revenge in the BronxThough incorruptible—at least by New York Police Department standards—Detective Isaac Sidel knows that sometimes it’s useful to look a little dirty. To gain access to the Bronx-based Guzmann crime syndicate, rumored to be building a human trafficking operation in Spanish Harlem, Sidel had himself kicked off the force on a corruption charge. With the help of Manfred Coen, a young cop whom Sidel once mentored, he posed as a desperate, dirty cop in hopes of infiltrating the Guzmann family. The gamble got Coen killed, and left Sidel with nothing but guilt, bruises, and a tapeworm. Now the detective craves revenge. To break down the syndicate, he targets Patrick Silver, the Guinness-addicted handler of forty-four-year-old man-child Jerónimo Guzmann. When a crush on Odile, porn queen of the Bronx, confuses Patrick’s loyalty, the family begins to tear itself apart. It’s up to Isaac Sidel to make sure they don’t take the city with them.

New York’s children wage war on the city’s rich, with Sidel as the refereeIn his years serving the people of New York, Isaac Sidel has often rescued the city from oblivion, but never has he faced anything as dangerous as the current baseball strike. The South Bronx, a wasteland of drugs, murder, and urban blight, is kept from sliding into utter chaos by Yankee Stadium’s steady stream of tourists. Every week that the strike continues and the fans stay away, the Bronx slips closer to the edge. As the crime rate spikes, a lone bright spot remains. Alyosha, a mysterious twelve-year-old graffiti artist, paints dramatic murals to commemorate the dead. When Alyosha befriends the daughter of the lawyer representing the player’s union, Sidel sees a possible solution to the Bronx’s woes. But there is too much money in baseball for the strike to be settled peacefully. Before the season starts, more blood will stain the sidewalks of El Bronx.

On the eve of a White House run, Sidel cleans up a mess in his old backyardTired of being led by weaklings, the American people have fallen in love with J. Michael Storm and Isaac Sidel, the lawyer and the New York mayor who saved the country from the worst baseball strike in history. The Democratic National Convention is at Madison Square Garden, and when Storm is nominated for the presidency, he’s going to put the eccentric, gun-toting Sidel at the bottom of the ticket. But before Sidel can take his shot at the White House, he has a few loose ends to tie up. He’s most preoccupied with a father-and-son detective team suspected of running a murder-for-hire operation that went south, resulting in the father shooting his son. Sidel suspects there’s more to the story, and until he’s gotten to the bottom of it, the vice presidency will have to wait.

Police commissioner Isaac Sidel struggles to keep the New York Police Department from shatteringWhen he was the police commissioner’s first deputy, Isaac Sidel was one of the most powerful men in New York. But now that he’s been promoted to the top job, there’s nothing for Sidel to do but stare at his desk and feed the tapeworm that’s attached to his stomach. The Justice Department sends him on a lecture tour of the country, but after one too many lunches with small-town mayors, Sidel goes AWOL and comes back to New York, getting in touch with the Ivanhoes, his illegal network of secret informants. A missing mob lawyer, a baseball-obsessed orphan genius, and a mysterious Romanian princess point towards a mystery that only he can tackle. Justice wants him back on tour, but something is rumbling beneath the city, and Sidel needs to be there to see it explode.

A month before he becomes New York City’s mayor, Sidel confronts a gang of baseball-loving racistsFor the first time in his adult life, Isaac Sidel is no longer a cop. He has moved beyond the halls of One Police Plaza, and is about to take residence in Gracie Mansion, after winning New York’s mayoral election in a landslide. Unable to bear his downtown apartment without his girlfriend—who is in Europe confronting her Nazi-tinged past—the increasingly paranoid mayor-elect has set up shop in a homeless shelter under the name Geronimo Jones. His aides roust him from his hiding spot and have returned him to work when he gets a call from the shelter: Geronimo Jones is dead. A gang of white supremacists roams the city, murdering shelter residents and marking them with Sidel’s alias. They leave notes with each victim, signing them with the names of nineteenth-century baseball players. Mayors don’t go armed, but Sidel isn’t the mayor yet. He and his Glock will settle this problem before he takes his oath of office.

In debt to the mob, Sidel’s sidekick brings hell to One Police PlazaFor Detective Caroll Brent, special attention from Commissioner Sidel is not a good thing. Sidel’s last pet detective, Manfred Coen, was killed by a gang of smugglers, and none of Sidel’s favorites have had good luck since. But when Sidel taps Brent for an unusual assignment, the young cop can’t refuse. As part of a feud with the head of the Board of Education, Sidel turns Brent into a one-man special task force to patrol the city’s schools. The lonely, miserable, dangerous work is not Brent’s only trouble. Ever since he made the mistake of marrying an heiress, he has been spending like mad to keep up with her lifestyle, borrowing money from the mob to keep himself in tuxedos on a detective’s salary. When his money runs out, it’s Sidel who will have to cover the debt.

A secret tryst threatens to turn two cops against each otherIsaac Sidel is a bear of a cop. Although his position as the commissioner’s first deputy is largely political, Sidel has not forgotten how to work the New York City streets. To protect the East Side he has survived gunfights, broken arms, and once tore out a hoodlum’s eyes. In his spare time he does favors for old friends, finding runaway daughters and protecting merchants from roving street gangs. On the street there is no problem he can’t solve, but at home he is powerless. His daughter Marilyn, twenty-five and twice divorced, keeps Sidel up at night. Just before her father goes to Paris for a lecture on police work, Marilyn runs away from her newest husband and shacks up with Manfred Coen, Sidel’s blue-eyed protégé cop. Both men love her, and when Marilyn becomes a target, they’ll destroy the city to save her, if they don’t kill each other first.

Disguised as a bum and living in a flophouse, Sidel tries to save a streetwalkerThe ragged old man has a tapeworm in his gut and a room at a nameless Whore’s Row hotel, but to those in the know, he is one of the most powerful people in New York. Once the first deputy of the police commissioner, Isaac Sidel has lived in impoverished exile ever since the death of his detective protégé, Manfred Coen. As he wanders the streets around Times Square, Sidel spies a prostitute with a fearsome scar: a letter D seared into her cheek. His pity stirred, he asks her name and buys her a meal. Afterwards, he sets out to destroy the man who branded her. Sidel’s target is a pimp with a love for James Joyce and a hand in the pocket of the police commissioner. Taking him down will mean upending the force that Sidel once served, but if the tapeworm doesn’t stop him, no crook can.

The Justice Department hires Sidel’s new chauffer to spy on the New York Police Department’s commissionerJoey 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.

Police commissioner Isaac Sidel struggles to keep the New York Police Department from shatteringWhen he was the police commissioner’s first deputy, Isaac Sidel was one of the most powerful men in New York. But now that he’s been promoted to the top job, there’s nothing for Sidel to do but stare at his desk and feed the tapeworm that’s attached to his stomach. The Justice Department sends him on a lecture tour of the country, but after one too many lunches with small-town mayors, Sidel goes AWOL and comes back to New York, getting in touch with the Ivanhoes, his illegal network of secret informants. A missing mob lawyer, a baseball-obsessed orphan genius, and a mysterious Romanian princess point towards a mystery that only he can tackle. Justice wants him back on tour, but something is rumbling beneath the city, and Sidel needs to be there to see it explode.

New York’s children wage war on the city’s rich, with Sidel as the refereeIn his years serving the people of New York, Isaac Sidel has often rescued the city from oblivion, but never has he faced anything as dangerous as the current baseball strike. The South Bronx, a wasteland of drugs, murder, and urban blight, is kept from sliding into utter chaos by Yankee Stadium’s steady stream of tourists. Every week that the strike continues and the fans stay away, the Bronx slips closer to the edge. As the crime rate spikes, a lone bright spot remains. Alyosha, a mysterious twelve-year-old graffiti artist, paints dramatic murals to commemorate the dead. When Alyosha befriends the daughter of the lawyer representing the player’s union, Sidel sees a possible solution to the Bronx’s woes. But there is too much money in baseball for the strike to be settled peacefully. Before the season starts, more blood will stain the sidewalks of El Bronx.

After decades of madness in the Bronx, Isaac Sidel visits the craziest state in the country Isaac Sidel is too popular to be America’s vice president. Once the New York Police Department commissioner, he became the most beloved mayor in the city’s history—famous for his refusal to surrender his Glock, and for his habit of disappearing for months at a time to fight crime at street level. So when baseball czar J. Michael Storm asks Sidel to join him on the election’s Democratic ticket, the two wild men romp to an unprecedented landslide. But as the president-elect’s mandate goes off the rails—threatened by corruption, sex, and God knows what else—he tires of being overshadowed by Sidel, and dispatches him to a place from which tough politicians seldom return: Texas. In the Lone Star state, Sidel confronts rogue astrologers, accusations of pedophilia, and a dimwitted assassin who doesn’t know when to take an easy shot. If this Bronx bomber doesn’t watch his step, he risks making vice-presidential history by getting killed on the job.

When his best friend is killed, Isaac Sidel looks for revenge in the BronxThough incorruptible—at least by New York Police Department standards—Detective Isaac Sidel knows that sometimes it’s useful to look a little dirty. To gain access to the Bronx-based Guzmann crime syndicate, rumored to be building a human trafficking operation in Spanish Harlem, Sidel had himself kicked off the force on a corruption charge. With the help of Manfred Coen, a young cop whom Sidel once mentored, he posed as a desperate, dirty cop in hopes of infiltrating the Guzmann family. The gamble got Coen killed, and left Sidel with nothing but guilt, bruises, and a tapeworm. Now the detective craves revenge. To break down the syndicate, he targets Patrick Silver, the Guinness-addicted handler of forty-four-year-old man-child Jerónimo Guzmann. When a crush on Odile, porn queen of the Bronx, confuses Patrick’s loyalty, the family begins to tear itself apart. It’s up to Isaac Sidel to make sure they don’t take the city with them.