In The Chairman: A Novel of Big City Politics, award-winning short fiction writer and journalist Mark M. Quinn offers a character driven plot that shows the thin line between good and evil in a big city ward boss. In a way that few authors can, Quinn offers a convincing portrait of how complicated and mercurial the world of ward politics is and how, by definition, a public official is torn by conflicting motivations. Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins is a practitioner of raw, devious politics. Readers will split their time between condemning and cheering this deliciously nefarious while wholly sympathetic character. As a caricature of all that big city politics achieves and represents, this novel is a spellbinding look into the annals of America's colorful 20th century big city politics. While the urban political machine may not yet have died away completely, its swansong is composed of hilarity, tragedy, and desperation, which Quinn pitch-perfectly records.