Ask Not (Nathan Heller) - Hardcover

Collins, Max Allan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 076533626X ISBN 13: 9780765336262

Publisher: Forge Books, 2013

Synopsis

Chicago, September 1964. Beatlemania sweeps the nation, the Vietnam War looms, and the Warren Commission prepares to blame a "lone-nut" assassin for the killing of President John F. Kennedy. But as the post-Camelot era begins, a suspicious outbreak of suicides, accidental deaths, and outright murders decimates assassination witnesses. When Nathan Heller and his son are nearly run down on a city street, the private detective wonders if he himself might be a loose end. . . .

Soon a faked suicide linked to President Johnson's corrupt cronies takes Heller to Texas, where celebrity columnist Flo Kilgore implores him to explore that growing list of dead witnesses. With the blessing of Bobby Kennedy―former US attorney general, now running for Senator from New York―Heller and Flo investigate the increasing wave of violence that seems to emanate from the notorious Mac Wallace, rumored to be LBJ's personal hatchet man.

Fifty years after JFK's tragic death, Collins's rigorous research for Ask Not raises new questions about the most controversial assassination of our time.

About this title

About the Author

MAX ALLAN COLLINS has been chosen as the 2017 Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America (MWA). He is the author of the acclaimed graphic novel Road to Perdition (basis for the Academy Award–winning Tom Hanks film) and its sequels. Publication of Ask Not, the concluding novel in Collins's JFK trilogy, marks the thirtieth year of his Nathan Heller mysteries. An independent filmmaker, Collins lives in eastern Iowa.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The third in Collins’ trilogy of Nathan Heller novels about JFK, this one jumps from a few weeks before the assassination (Target Lancer, 2012), when a planned attempt on the president’s life in Chicago was aborted, to several months after the events of November 22, 1963. Heller becomes involved when he and his son are nearly run down as they leave a Beatles concert. Recognizing the driver as one of the Cubans involved in the Chicago plot, Heller sets out to take his family off the assassins’ radar and soon finds himself even deeper in hot water, as he follows the trail of a host of spurious suicides by witnesses of the shooting in Dallas whose versions of what happened conflict with the official, “one-man, one-shooter” version being promulgated by the Warren Commission. Teaming with TV star and investigative reporter Flo Kilgore (read Dorothy Kilgallen), who is on the verge of exposing the cover-up—and its ties to several LBJ cronies—Heller ruffles feathers at the CIA, in the Mob, and possibly even in (or very near) the White House. A master at thoroughly believable historical re-creations of unsolved or covered-up crimes, Collins is the perfect fiction writer to tackle the JFK assassination, and he does so brilliantly, working the edges of the story by focusing on the little-known raft of questionable suicides—all documented in the historical record—and making great use of the Kilgore/Kilgallen character, who was herself one of the unlikely suicides. Even readers who aren’t conspiracy theorists will find themselves utterly drawn into the story and convinced by Collins’ version of what happened. And, best of all, it’s a terrific detective novel, compelling and well constructed even without the historical connection. --Bill Ott

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 076533626X
• ISBN 13: 9780765336262
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320