FSB Author Article
Reclaiming or Reinventing History:
That is the Question
By Robert Greer,
Author of The Mongoose Deception
When I went to have a look at the end notes for Vincent Bugliosi's
masterful, recently published 1,612-page treatise on the JFK
assassination, Reclaiming History:
The Assassination of President John
F. Kennedy, a book that emphatically tells readers once and for
all why
they should believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed America's
thirty-fifth president, I found a few things that were incongruous.
I'll get to that, but first, what about the author?
Mr. Bugliosi
lets readers know right up front that he has a professional interest in
the Kennedy assassination that dates back some twenty-one years to
1986, and there's no question that he has penned a valuable scholarly
document to support his point of view -- that Lee Harvey Oswald did in
fact kill John F. Kennedy. There can also be little argument that Mr.
Bugliosi, a world-famous trial lawyer and the author of the
international blockbuster Helter
Skelter, is more of a heavyweight when
it comes to these things than am I, a simple country doctor. But I also
have a take on who killed JFK, one that I put forward in my latest CJ
Floyd mystery, The Mongoose Deception.
Why believe my take on the
assassination, one that's light years removed from that of the esteemed
Mr. Bugliosi? Well, you don't have to, but it's America, and even
country doctors are entitled to their opinions. And by the way, I say
right up front, in very Bugliosi-like fashion, that Oswald didn't do it.
More to the point, how do the two books
differ? To my way of thinking,
they differ in two very clear ways. Reclaiming
History is a scholarly
book of nonfiction supported by twenty-one years of research. The
Mongoose Deception, is a book of fiction with a mere year's
worth of
research to prop it up, as I point out on page 2 of the novel in a
prominent disclaimer.
Since I started out to write my work of
fiction, I didn't think it would matter that much that my world and Mr.
Bugliosi's didn't run parallel, especially since at the time I started
Mongoose, I had no idea that
Mr. Bugliosi was in the midst of writing
the definitive JFK assassination book. But lo and behold, I made a
tactical error. So thrash me with a wet noodle! I forgot about The
Da
Vinci Code and the uproar that ensued when the public, and more
particularly the Catholic Church, accepted Dan Brown's thriller as
gospel. I forgot that in these days of docujournalism, people too often
see fiction as fact. So in an attempt to see if my fiction paralleled
fact, Bugliosi-style, that is, I sat down and read Reclaiming
History,
hoping to simply compare my take on "who did it" in a 376-page mystery
and historical thriller with a "factual" 1,612-page treatise. When I
finished dissecting the two books (and by the way, as you might expect,
Mongoose took very little time
to dissect when contrasted with
Reclaiming History, I was left
with two questions that I'm sure Mr.
Bugliosi would suggest make The
Mongoose Deception pure hogwash.
First
question: Who really killed JFK -- was it Oswald or someone else?
Second
question: What about the black Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden, a
real-life person who claims even to this day that he was aware of an
attempt on JFK's life in Chicago weeks prior to Dallas? Is that hogwash
too? Bolden grabbed my interest early on in my research for Mongoose
because, like me, he is African American. But unlike me, he was jailed
after claiming he had information about a planned hit on JFK in Chicago
prior to Dallas. To this day, Bolden's full story remains untold. It is
his historical presence that triggered a good measure of my interest in
writing The Mongoose Deception.
For the record, Bolden doesn't appear
as a character in Mongoose,
and for the record, Mr. Bugliosi gives him
rather short shrift, relegating him to end-note treatment in Reclaiming
History. (Incidentally, the end note is referenced in the book,
but I
couldn't bring it up in the end-note and source-note diskette provided
with Reclaiming History.)
After stumbling across Bolden's claim
that
there was a planned attempt on Kennedy's life in Chicago, I read Lamar
Waldron's book Ultimate Sacrifice
in which Waldron suggests -- with very
good source documentation, I might add -- that not only was there an
attempt on Kennedy's life in Chicago but that there was also an attempt
planned for Tampa, Florida, weeks before Dallas.
I integrated this
history into Mongoose, but
there is essentially no Abraham Bolden, no
Chicago, and no Tampa in Reclaiming
History -- just Dallas! It seems a
little strange for a scholarly treatise to skip over such important
events, but since I (simply a country doctor) am not one to argue with
a scholar, I moved on.
More to the fact, I am also no
conspiracy
buff, and I really don't know for certain if Oswald killed JFK, whether
Kennedy was killed by the person I claim to be the real assassin in The
Mongoose Deception, or if JFK was killed by the late James
Brown,
Popeye the Sailor Man, or the pope. What I do know is that end notes
that can't be found in a purported scholarly work don't make a whole
lot of sense.
Enough, you say. Spare us the mystery
of the missing
notes. We aren't scholars either. We're the truth-starved public, and
all we want is the bottom line. Who pulled the trigger? I'll get to
that, but if I were the one doing the asking, I'd first ask, were there
really two other attempts on Kennedy's life prior to Dallas? The
Mongoose Deception says there were. Reclaiming History says
there
weren't. Read both books and decide for yourself. But when you do, I
suggest you take The Mongoose
Deception to the beach, or at least to a
comfy chair in your house, your local coffee shop, or the library. As
for Reclaiming History,
you'll have to decide when and where to read
those 1,612 pages yourself.
Finally, although I won't name names
here so as not to spoil Mongoose
for you, here's a final tidbit.
Attorney Bugliosi claims that one of the people of interest as the
purported JFK triggerman, a person thought by many to have been
involved in the JFK hit, couldn't possibly have killed Kennedy because
he was in prison at the time. Yet if you scan the footnotes to
Reclaiming History, you'll
find that the esteemed Mr. Bugliosi admits
that that person was actually undergoing medical treatment in France at
the time -- and strangely, no one seems to be able to pinpoint the
exact
whereabouts of the person or those treatments. That's something I think
every country doctor needs to think about. Fodder for fiction? You bet.
So, enough with the comparisons. The Mongoose Deception is fiction, and Reclaiming History is, according to its author, pure unadulterated fact. Who really killed JFK? you ask in desperation. Read both books, and several others on the subject to be on the safe side, and then decide for yourself.
Copyright © 2007 Robert Greer
Author Bio
Robert Greer lives in Denver where he is a practicing surgical
pathologist, research scientist, and professor of
pathology and medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences
Center. He edits The High Plains
Literary Review and reviews books for KUVO, a Denver NPR
affiliate. Learn more about Robert Greer at www.robertgreerbooks.com.