Word: beeing
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EUGENE KENNEDY is a professor at Chicago's Loyola University and a biographer of the city's late political boss, Richard J. Daley Because of his background and the book's supposed subject--the rise of a Chicago female mayor to power--one expects Queen Bee to exhibit an insider's sophistication and cleverness Kennedy does have a good working knowledge of Chicago's city politics. It shows in his novel, which interrelates centers of city power realistically But that is just about the book's only redeeming quality...
...Queen Bee, set in Chicago of the 1990's is essentially Harlequin Romance in city hall. The story traces Ann Marie O'Brien's quick rise to power in city politics, from the moment she impresses political boss Mayor Tom Cullen to her ascension to the mayoralty. She becomes a media star because of her tough, no-nonsense approach to city issues and outmaneuvers the corrupt aldermen whose interests she interferes with. Once she takes office, her television-commentator finance, Paul Michael Martin, engineers a deal with the most corrupt group of aldermen -to plead their case to his lover...
...what really pegs Queen Bee as a trashy potboiler is the portrayal of all this political drive as surrogate sex. Kennedy opens the book with a description of Paul Michael Martin's sexual fantasies. And in the first chapter, he keeps the otherwise lame plot moving by introducing a series of bizarre homosexual murders. O'Brien, who has remained celibate since the disappearance of her husband, finds her politics career relieves her frustrations; meanwhile, as Chicago politics corrupt her more and more, she gets gradually more involved with "P.M." Martin...
Admitting that "I wasn't really qualified anyway," New York Senator Allophones D'Amato resigns his seat. In a special election for the vacant spot, former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali defeats Republican drugstore heir Lewis Lehrman handily. Ali runs on the slogan: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee/ Lehrman got whapped once before, now I'll put him down in three...
...around California campaigning for a nuclear freeze. In between some backseat driving, he talked to Los Angeles Correspondent Denise Worrell. During the week that she spent with Newman, Worrell also watched him spellbind waiters at a San Francisco restaurant as he concocted his own salad dressing, rescue a stricken bee that had fallen on a patio table and, inevitably, jump up to prepare a bowl of popcorn. Says Worrell: "He is hyper and whimsical. But he wears his humor like armor; underneath, he is serious about his activism and his acting...