Word: queene
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...unit Continental Inn, are in the midst of foreclosure. Retail sales growth has slumped from the peak years of the 1970s, when profits grew at an annual rate of more than 15%. Owners of chic boutiques and eateries gripe that business is significantly down from last season. The "Silver Queen," as residents fondly refer to their town, even looks a bit bedraggled. Compared with accommodations in Vail, which now attracts more business, Aspen's once premier lodges seem cramped and aging. Says Boutique Owner Rita St. John: "People are paying $200 a night and getting a dump." There...
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...
...satellite night. Three basketball games fill the sports stations: one pro, one college, one high school. Cable News Network is airing its 30-min. business report. With Mick Jagger and Joan Jett setting the tempo, MTV rocks all night. PBS has opera in German and soap opera in the Queen's English. In the free-for-all called cable access, gurus and do-gooders are proselytizing for churches without disciples, causes without effect. A raunchier access channel offers the spectacle of a young man tap dancing as he undresses to the theme from Star Wars. Click...