Please
welcome author Jim Nesbitt back to the blog today with his latest guest post
review …
THE
ASSASSINATION WE CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF
America
is a conspiracy-crazed nation, addicted to the breadcrumbs of "insider
information" that only the few are smart enough to suss out, hyped on the
latest finger-pointing revelation of shadowy string-pullers manipulating
dastardly deeds too many are fervently willing to believe without question.
How
did we get this way? Don't just blame the rise of social media that can inject
a fresh dose of outlandish intrigue from your smartphone right into your
brainpan. Look to the mother of all cabals, the malignant fountainhead of dark
machinations and evil intrigue, the gateway to America's addiction to
conspiracy theories -- the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
JFK's
shocking murder in Dallas' Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 was one of the
first major temblors of the turbulent 1960s. It was a seminal event that ripped
a huge rift in America's cultural and political fabric and taught us a searing inaugural
lesson about mistrusting our own government, hammered home by the
assassinations of JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
as well as the violent upheaval and unrest caused by the Vietnam War.
More
than sixty years after those fatal shots rang out, we're still morbidly
fascinated, fixated on the question that still remains unanswered for many
Americans: who killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the nation's 35th president?
Author
Terrence McCauley shrewdly capitalizes on this eternal interest in JFK's murder
with a superbly written historical novel, The Twilight Town: A Dallas '63
Novel, the second in a planned trilogy. It is work firmly rooted in the record,
including a prequel novella focused on the squad of Cuban gunmen that fruitlessly
awaited Kennedy's arrival in Chicago earlier that year. The book also leans on
the most plausible alternatives to the official finding that an overwhelming
majority of Americans don't believe -- Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed
Kennedy.
McCauley,
a talented author of thrillers, Westerns and crime fiction, deftly weaves
characters of his creation with the real-life figures of this American tragedy,
including former Major Gen. Edwin Walker, a rabid right-wing extremist; Jack
Ruby, the transplanted minor mobster and strip club owner who killed Oswald;
J.D. Tippit, the Dallas police officer who was gunned down less than an hour
after Kennedy's assassination, a murder pinned on Oswald by the Warren
Commission; and, George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian-born geophysicist and
occasional CIA asset.
But
it's a smart move to center the narrative on a character of his own creation --
Dan Wilson, an ambitious Dallas police detective seconded to an FBI unit
eavesdropping on the cop and criminal patrons of a popular diner. That way, the
reader discovers the scattered pieces of this lethal puzzle as Wilson does,
meeting the players along the way, both real-life, like Tippit, a fellow Korean
War vet styled as Wilson's former partner, and fictional, like Harry Denton, a
Dallas cop and sharpshooter who is part of cadre of hard-core segregationists
and right-wingers commanded by a hyper-political captain.
Wilson,
the son of a legendary Texas Ranger named Duke, is trying to parlay his FBI
work into a gig as one of J. Edgar Hoover's boys and figures digging up dirt on
Walker and his minions is the quickest way to climb this ladder.
He
also befriends Oswald, turning him into a snitch and trailing him on a
gun-running trip to camps in the Louisiana swamps used to train Cuban exiles
for a possible sequel to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.
The
camps are connected to two New Orleans figures who become targets of Orleans
Parish DA Jim Garrison's later investigation of JFK's assassination, former
Eastern Airlines pilot David Ferrie and former senior FBI agent Guy Banister,
both rabid anti-Communists. Oswald spent the summer of 1963 in New Orleans,
where he frequently passed out pro-Castro pamphlets printed at the building
where Banister's private eye agency was located, which puts his political
stance in question.
The
pace is swift and the action is sudden and often violent, like Wilson's
decision to murder one of Walker's key minions after he delivers a
not-so-veiled threat toward Wilson's wife, leaving the body on Swish Street, the
"pink part" of downtown Dallas.
It's
a line you don't expect Wilson to cross and when he does, without as much as a
blink, you instantly think of James Ellroy's murderous cops and that author's
flawed masterpiece, American Tabloid. McCauley skillfully treads some of
the same ground but refrains from the juddering and distracting gimmicks to
tell a straight, edgy story we think we know but find out we don't.
So,
let's ask the question again. Who killed Jack Kennedy? The Mob, pissed about
Bobby's relentless prosecutions and the botched Cuba invasion? Gen. Walker's right-wing
crazies who helped make Dallas a city of hate? How about the CIA, also angry
about Cuba and Kennedy's desire to negotiate with the Soviet Union to ease Cold
War tensions and get us out of Vietnam.
Or,
it could have been D, all of the above, a hellish confluence of conspirators,
with freelancers and operatives keeping a foot in several camps. McCauley does
a masterful job portraying the criss-crossing connections and the swirl of
deadly plots with no Mr. Big to rule them all.
Take
your pick. Remember, though -- none of these players are a sure thing, but all
had a reason for wanting Kennedy dead. And if you want to know where McCauley
stands, buy his book. And the prequel, Chicago '63, as well as the sequel.
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4pLE0I2
Jim
Nesbitt ©2026
Jim
Nesbitt is the award-winning author of five hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers
that feature battered but dogged Dallas PI Ed Earl Burch. The fifth Ed Earl
Burch novel, THE FATAL SAVING GRACE,
has just been released. Nesbitt was a journalist for more than 30 years,
serving as a reporter, editor and roving national correspondent for newspapers
and wire services in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Washington, D.C. He now lives in Athens, Alabama, where he is
writing his sixth Ed Earl Burch novel, THE PERFECT TRAIN WRECK.
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