RIDE A COCKHORSE

A woman who curdles the blood but can't be begrudged credit for her audacity is the monster at the center of this outrageous and funny novel. Kennedy (Columbine, The Flower of the Republic, Lulu Incognito) has served up imperious women in sex-role reversals before, but he may be unlikely to top this one. Frankie Fitzgibbon is a hitherto mild-mannered home-loan officer when, at 45 and a widow, she flips. The new Frankie is sexually aggressive (wielding her breasts like stun guns) and a demon strategist and mesmerizing spieler whose ruthlessness would make Genghis Khan look like Gandhi. Her aim is to take over her bank and then take on the entire New England banking industry. Opponents tumble like tenpins, others are humbled into being willing slaves. She seduces a 17-year-old high-school drum major for her boy toy and becomes the goddess of a gay hairdresser, stereotypically named Bruce. Gay rights'—and for that matter, women's rights'— partisans may not be pleased. The ``Cockhorse'' in the title can take a Freudian reading. Frankie is always depicted as being utterly self-righteous, and even hurt at not being understood, no matter how low the blow she deals others. Her relentless monologues of self-justification get a little wearisome. Kennedy cannot entirely avoid monotony in a story so focused on a single monomaniac, although he tries by continually raising the hurdles his protagonist kicks over. Particularly comic are Frankie's relationship with her ecology-minded daughter, her opposite in every way, and with her proper little boss, who doesn't know what he's in for when he gives her head. A bravura, darkly comic performance by a novelist who matches his outsized heroine in effrontery.