Three Slow Boats That Never Arrive

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 in exchange for a cut of their profits.

All this could be interesting if Kennedy supplied some personal involvement, but the initially sympathetic qualities in O'Brien fade as her political career takes off. As her reformist zeal becomes lust for power, more and more of Kennedy's attention goes to her pleasure in manipulating men, throwing temper tantrums, and other childish antics.

But 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.

Martin and O'Brien's nicknames exemplify the book's trite symbolism. At the book's start "A.M." is the pure, Catholic woman, P.M. the lecherous man. A.M., like day, represents good and opens Chicago politics to the light of public scrutiny, while P.M. is a reporter on the take, leaving the dealings of this sponsors in darkness and symbolizing the evil of the evening. While P.M. is sexually conquering A.M., evil is running rampant in the O'Brien administration. Kennedy, a professor of psychology, manages to mix pop psychology and symbols in with sex, violence and political corruption; the result is more like a T.V. movie than anything resembling literature.