BOOKS: Windy City, Scott Simon (2008)

Chicago politics are at the heart of Simon's charming, witty novel, which focuses on one stressful weekend in the life of an alderman.

Sundaran "Sunny" Rupini represents Chicago's 48th Ward (of 50), and is also the vice-mayor. That's usually a ceremonial post, and Sunny's duties don't extend much beyond wielding the gavel during the mayor's bathroom breaks. But when the mayor is found dead in his office late one Thursday night, Sunny becomes the Acting Interim Mayor.

It's a temporary post, as the board of aldermen will meet on Monday to elect one of its own to be Acting Mayor until Chicago can hold a new election. But temporary or not, it's Sunny who's expected to deal with the surprises that pop up -- turns out the mayor's death wasn't so accidental, after all, and there's a pushy district attorney who'd been investigating corruption in the mayor's office. There are also two teenage daughters for the recently-widowed Sunny to take care off, a new security detail to adapt to, a restaurant to run, and various ethnic festivals and community meetings (not to mention the mayor's funeral) to attend.

But above all else, there are 49 other alderman to contend with, each one convinced that he or she is the best choice to be the new mayor. Everyone is choosing sides, juggling the need to play politics with the desire not to be seen playing politics with the mayor so recently deceased.

One of the strengths of Simon's novel is the skill with which his characters are drawn. The two principal contenders for the mayor's job, for instance, are a colorful pair, each so crisply imagined that you can hear their voices when they speak. Linas Slavinskas is a puckish fellow, whose natural impulse to mischief often leads his colleagues to underestimate him; Vera Barrow, the leader of the board's self-styled "African Queens" caucus, is a dynamic woman who does not tolerate stupidity and foolishness in her fellow aldermen.

With fifty aldermen, it's obviously not possible for all of them to be as thoroughly developed, but even those who are background figures are efficiently sketched characters, with more personality showing through than you'd expect. By the time of the climactic roll-call vote, we have a fairly good sense of who many of these people are.

You probably won't be too surprised by the outcome of that final vote, by the way; to his credit, though, Simon does a clever job of disguising and delaying the ultimate result until the last possible moment.

Windy City is a lively, funny piece of entertainment, a sharp look at the multi-ethnic politics of American cities, and I enjoyed it immensely.