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.

Jerome Charyn