Windy city

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-nine other aldermen who have their own clashing ambitions.How will Sunny do what's best for both