The Chairman’S Challenge

Book excerpt: Machine politics is a tough business, filled with people who put far more value on power and money than on honor, friendship, or the lives of those who challenge them. Atop this maelstrom sits Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins, formerly the undisputed boss of the Irish-Catholic Fifteenth Ward and now the man who controls the entire city. In this position, he finds himself surrounded by opportunists, amateurs, criminals, thieves, and cold-blooded killers. Those he can trust are few and far between, and they are far outnumbered those who would attempt to use their connection to him to eliminate their enemies and line their own pockets. While only one former ally is sufficiently toughor crazyenough to directly challenge his leadership, the Chairman will stop at nothing to put down any challenger. In The Chairmans Challenge, the sequel to The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, award-winning writer Mark M. Quinn takes the reader on a sometimes dark, but always thought-provoking, tour of the ins and outs of a political machine. Its a brutal examination of the minds of men and women who will sacrifice anything or anyone for a chance at power.