Books, Arts & Manners: Debts Paid in Full

Markers, by Sidney Zion (Fine, 426 pp., $19.90)

THERE ARE so many things that are good about this novel that it’s difficult to know where to start. It has a wide cast of characters, including gangsters and former gangsters, Joe Kennedy (who falls into both categories), Lyndon Johnson (no comment), Franklin Roosevelt, Bobby Kennedy, assorted women, lawyers and judges, politicians of every stripe, two major central characters, and a strong driving plot that holds it all together.