"Once Upon a Droshky" was the title of Jerome Charyn's first novel, and that title might serve as a lead-in to his 12th and latest, "Secret Isaac." There are strong elements of the fairy tale in this curious book. Whores and pimps take the place of princesses and their keepers, big-city corruption is the glass mountain, politicians are the wizards, and Isaac Sidel, secret Isaac, is the disguised prince….

It's difficult to be sure what Jerome Charyn is getting at in this frenetic novel. For a reader familiar with some of the earlier adventures of Isaac Sidel contained in "Blue Eyes," "Marilyn the Wild" and "The Education of Patrick Silver," that heuristic thread would perhaps begin to reveal a pattern. But even if it did, one suspects the pattern would be no more or less fragmented than it is in "Secret Isaac."

Mr. Charyn has no "characters," in...