Sunday, September 2, 2012

{Review} Marilyn the Wild by Jerome Charyn

ISBN #: 0-380-00964-1
Page Count: 203
Copyright: 1976
Publisher: Avon Books


Book Summary:
(Taken from back cover)

Wild One: Marilyn - so wild, so sexy, so loose - had a way of coming unstuck from things, like her college career at Sarah Lawrence, or her three husbands. Once on the rampage, she careened through the mean Manhattan streets indulging a sexual yen for "Blue Eyes" - Manfred Coen - the sultry angel of her father's detective force.

House of Isaac: Isaac Sidel was the family glue, and his family was extensive. The self-appointed police patriarch of the Lower East Side, he was feared by pavement pimps on up to Mafia dons in their Mulberry Street clubs. Then a teenage gang challenged his paternal justice. Slinking through the snow-swept alleys, with all the brutally perverse imagination of youth they stalked Isaac's soft spot - the one thing he couldn't control - his daughter, Marilyn the Wild!


Mandy's Review:

Marilyn the Wild is the second Isaac Sidel novel written by Jerome Charyn. The first, Blue Eyes, introduced Isaac's main golden boy, Manfred Coen. Isaac is the police chief and has the respect of most people in his neighborhood. There are a few that want revenge against Isaac, but they have to be careful about how they get that revenge. Isaac is pretty much untouchable. The only person that can really get to him is his daughter, Marilyn.

Marilyn is an extremely promiscuous lady. She's obeyed her father by marrying her first three husbands, but now she wants the guy she's in love with: Manfred Coen. Coen knows that diddling with the chief's daughter is a huge no-no, but they engage in a sexual relationship anyway. Marilyn falls in love with Coen's softer and sweeter side because, in my opinion, he's different from all of the other men she's been with.

Isaac suspects Marilyn and Coen are sneaking around behind his back. When his daughter's life becomes endangered, though, he chose to overlook that fact by choosing Coen to be Marilyn's bodyguard. There's a gang of teenagers going around injuring people that Isaac care about, one of them being his mother.

Eventually the case is solved, just not in the best interests of those involved. Coen and Marilyn's ending is extremely bittersweet.

Jerome Charyn not only has the ability to make characters come to life, like he did in Blue Eyes, but he's also proven that he has the ability to continue the characters' world in subsequent novels, as he did with Marilyn the Wild. Isaac Sidel has a real presence in these novels and you can feel some form of his "touch" in every situation.

I'm really enjoying getting to know Isaac's world and will soon be starting the third novel in the Isaac Sidel series, The Education of Patrick Silver.

1 comment:

  1. The impossible has happened! I now love you more than I love Marilyn the Wild. And that is not easy, because I love badass Marilyn and how she twists men, including Isaac Sidel, around her finger (probably her middle finger, now that I think of it.) Thanks for reviewing BOOK TWO in the Isaac Sidel series and showing that each one gets darker, deeper, dirtier and more delightful. - Lenore Riegel

    ReplyDelete

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