Three women have important jobs in the book. They are fictional. The problems the fictional women faced trying to do their jobs in a man’s world are real.
All are novelized. You read dialogue and details and personal stories that you won’t find in official testimony. Reading the Warren Commission volumes might not be exciting, but this book is. The questions and answers in the trial have to be fiction, because Oswald never went on trial. But.... you still feel like you have a front row seat in the court room.
There are plenty of conspiracy theories, both real and fictional. These were enhanced by the fact that Oswald had trained as a Marine marksman and then defected to Russia. He married a Russian woman and returned to the US. The author had his pick of theories to complicate the “trial,” without picking any of them.
There were also quite a few mysteries. People disagreed over whether they heard three, four, or five shots. They also disagreed over where they came from. Why were only two bullets found? The lawyers in the book debate these mysteries as they try to figure out what really happened.
This is an engaging book with a number of of people in it, real and fictional. A list of names with a brief description of each one would have been useful for readers who can’t keep them all straight.
William Alsup is well positioned to write about criminal trials in the South. Growing up in Mississippi, he became a trial lawyer. In 1999 he was appointed a U.S. District Judge in California’s East Bay. Now semi-retired, he participated in and presided over many criminal trials. In this book you get the benefit of both his professional knowledge and his storytelling skills.
Editor's Note: Jo has finished her book on working in the Southern civil rights movement and is looking for a publisher.
Copyright © 2023 by Jo Freeman
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