No comments about Grass Will Not Grow on My Grave.

No comments about The Assassination of Heydrich.

No comments about A heritage of stone.

No comments about Assassinations - The Murders That Changed History.

5 comments about Umbrella Man (Jack Flippo Mysteries).

1. This one kept me up late, laughing and turning pages. It's full of dead-on dialog, and plenty of twists, turns and surprises. I hadn't read Swanson before, but now I'm a fan.



2. If you like like them funny with lots of action with a macho male hero and convoluted double-double cross plots this is for you. Elmore Leonard comes to mind - although the dialog is not quite up to his standards. Flippo is not quite as rounded a character as Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, and the prose is not quite as good as Sue Grafton's but this is up there in that league. Kennedy assasination buffs might love it or hate it, but you don't have to be one to enjoy it. Dense Dallas atmosphere.



3. Jack Flippo has seen better days, but he seems on his way back up when former cop Eddie "Bent" Nickles sends him in search of a missing piece of film. A film shot November 22, 1963 in Dallas. Soon Flippo is bounced from his new job with a tony law firm, leaving behind its plush carpets and mahogany credenzas.

   Sylvan Dufrain, the film's photographer was shot and then burned in his Cadillac a month after the Kennedy assassination...or was he? Dufrain's wife and brother are now operating a shop that specializes in whoopie cushions and fake vomit.

   Lola (aka Jennifer), Jack Flippos "artistician" girlfriend is putting together a show using blowup dolls from the local porn shop. Her plans are deflated by bullets shot through the living room window of the home she shares with Flippo.

   Weldon Chaney is a disabled hitman saddled with the sons-in-law from hell. His efforts to make competent criminals of them are doomed to failure.

   Treena Watts is a bail agent with a heart of gold. She is searching for answers about the death of her brother Mineola. She is leery of Jack Flippo's help since it was Jack who sent Mineola to prison.

   This loopy cast of characters collide in a wickedly funny morality tale. Swanson expertly juggles the subplots that come together to a satifying ending that leaves Jack back in his linoleum-floored office with its metal desk.

   Watch out Kinky Friedman, Doug Swanson's breathing down your neck!




4. I didn't know what I was buying when I got this book, I just read the back and it caught my eyes. So I took it home and ended up finishing it in less than a week. I'd get tired of reading, then something would happen that made me keep it in my hands. Pick this one up for sure.



5. In this fourth installment of Jack Flippo, former lawyer turned private investigator, he's consumed with the possible conspiracy surrounding the JFK assassination in Dallas so many years ago.

   Some dubious film has surfaced (again) which shows a gunman on the grassy knoll. It was available back then but was covered up, thus the conspiracy theory. All these years, the t.v. news shows have provided this 'proof'; yet, no one in government would even consider it. J. Edgar Hoover kept all the evidence 'private' as he did the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

   A friend of Jack's owns a "you-are-there JFK deathmobile" promoting this presence of a second gunman by taking groups of crackpots to the triple overpass there near the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald was employed.

   I still remember vividly watching live t.v. when Jack Ruby assassinated Oswald. Was this meant to be? Ruby was a part of the underworld of gangsters. Was he set up as Oswald had been to take all the flak and be killed while some higher-ups in goverment got rid of our enigmatic president of the U.S.

   At that time, as a young mother, I was doing some freelance secretarial work for an insurance adjuster by taking dictation at his home office and typing at mine. That day, we'd been hard at work but I went down the hill in the historic part of Pulaski to prepare lunch for my family. Around noon, ET, the radio announcement aired about President Kennedy being rushed to the hospital after being shot in the head. I called Brandon Davis to see if he wanted me to return for more dictation and was told we'd try. He, his wife Elsie, and I spent the next few days watching all the happenings on their t.v. set. Needless to say, not much work took place.

   I was appalled to see an innocent man gunned down while in custody of police, with his hands behind his back -- no way to defend himself. In this fine country, each person who is arrested is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty and entitled to his day in court. This 'right' was taken away from Lee Harvey Oswald with a national audience watching mesmerized.

   Sometimes the guilty get away with murder (a la OJ) as our court system is flawed and money can buy freedom. It's not the unknowns like Oswald, Sirkan, and James Earl Ray (all shady characters) who receive Justice. One Chief of Police told me "don't you know, there is no justice."

   Freedom (from harming others) goes to those in power or have the money to hire important, nasty lawyers. Jack was an honest man who was taken in by trying to prove something which will never be proved. Lyndon Johnson made sure of that; after all, this master assassination took place in his state and he benefitted to the tune of being our most vulgar president ever.

   Doug Swanson is a pretty good writer, but I wish he'd let Jack retire and find a "Fletch" (a la Gregory Macdonald).

No comments about Master Index to the J. F. K. Assassination Investigation: The Reports and Supporting Volumes of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the.

No comments about Scop (Pyramid).

5 comments about Sacred Geography: A Tale of Murder and Archaeology in the Holy Land.

1. Caveat Emptor.

   The fascinating world of Albert Glock is wasted in this wretched display of "yellow" journalism. The first 25 pages tempt the reader with Glock's difficult and languid childhood. After chapter 3, the author loses perspective of his topic, instead providing us with a hackneyed description of Glock's revolutionary methods to find the Palestinian's common ancestors.

   Part two of "Sacred" squanders what could have been a fascinating study into the mind of the radical archaeologist. Instead we are presented with Fox's opinionated and, at times, churlish investigation of Glock's murder.

   If Fox remembered the Birzeit professor's suggestion that the "answer lies in the archaeology", than perhaps he would have foraged deeper into the cultural and intellectual historical influences that formed his eccentric archeological methods.




2. All I have to say is-

   I've read it, and it's good, but I recommend this book's original version- Palestine Twilight. For some reason, the title was changed when it came to America, and some elements were edited out.




3. A well-written, compelling account of the politics and various agendas of two centuries of archaeology in Palestine and Israel, as well as as a troubling and eye-opening study of social, political, and crime issues in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the '90s.



4. The phenomenon that catalyzes - and paralyzes -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be the riddle of our age. By reopening this 1992 murder investigation, journalist Fox reveals how much wider a puzzle it is. Why has this patch of earth attracted so much political, cultural, and religious investment?
   
   Investigating the murder of Dr. Albert Glock, director of the Palestinian Institute of Archaeology, Fox uncovers the key role Biblical archaeology, an opportunistic subdiscipline founded on the idea that the Bible is a true chronicle of history, has played in Palestine's tumultuous history.
   
   Since the age of the Holy Roman Emperor Constantine, the field has been replete with religious charlatans and swashbuckling adventurers, generals and statesmen, all mining Palestine for biblical wonders to advance their own causes. Fox calls this "negative cosmopolitanism", meaning the identification of many people with one place -- the region's most insoluble problem.
   
   Making the landscape fit the map has served the modern state of Israel, Fox claims, yet soon enough he admits his bias, writing that he "took to rooting for the Palestinian underdog."
   
   Regarding the Hague Convention's 1954 prohibition of excavation in occupied territories, the author gleefully reports Professor Glock's circumventions, while reminding us "all respectable archaeologists" refrained from excavating, "except the Israelis."



5. How important can archeology be today? Unbelievably crucial. In this part of the world it is the justification for worldview, religion, the meaning of life. It seems all of the parties involved come off are charlatans, awful human beings, and trying to justify their own criminality via archeology. This poor Dr Glock gets ineptly kmixed up in it and gets himself killed.
   No matter how complex the issues of Palestine/Israel appear, they are clearly more complicated. And they are international, national, and LOCAL.
   The book is clearly written and fun to read. Do not expect an answer.
   I would have liked even more archeology.

1 comments about Operation Rawhide: The Dramatic Emergency Surgery on President Reagan (Thomsen, Paul, Creation Adventure Series.).

1. Although I disagree with the religious views of the author, being an evolutionist and all, I disliked this book for other reasons. It really tried to shortcut medical procedures by using G-d to explain it. Obviously, this doesn't just happen to conservative Republicans, it also happens to liberal Democrats, like me. I don't think,"Because G-d did it," is a viable explanation scientifically or medically.

1 comments about The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: A Searching Look at the Conspiracy and the Cover-Up, 1968-1978.

1. This was one of the very first books on the RFK assasination and still one of the best. Bill Turner was an FBI agent who published other true crime books and Jonn Christian was a former TV reporter. The prose in this volume, while not spectacular, is highly readable, especially relative to other assasination/conspiracy books. (Is it just me, or do a lot of other people feel a sense of total and irreperable fatigue after about 20 pages of your typical JFK assasination book?)
   
   When one considers the bizarre nature of the known objective facts of the RFK assasination and the stakes involved, it is truly amazing so few books are available. Sirhan Sirhan is a true cipher, and nothing in the 'official' story about him allegedly murdering RFK makes any kind of sense. I will not get into the specifics here, as I think this book spells them out quite nicely, and anyone competant in Google can get a good summary of the points anyway on the 'net. (Also, I highly recommend a book from the early 1990's called 'It's a Conspiracy!' by the National Insecurity Counsel, for a very concise version of these points). But consider one this: The LA Police never released the details of their investigation, destoyed hundreds of crime scene photos and a bullet-struck tile at the crime scene (yes, they destroyed a bullet hole at the crime scene!), and shredded hundreds of pages of witness interviews. Instead of a full report, they released a 'Summary'...in 1986!!! (18 years after the event. Hmmm...)
   
   Americans are astoundingly naive regarding assasinations. We are conditioned from grade school onward to think that assasinations are usually committed by a 'lone nut,' when all of human history shows that virtually all of the time, when a nationally prominent political leader is murdered, it is a conspiracy.
   
   When a schmuck like you or I gets murdered, it might be a lone nut, just like it might be a mugger, or a rapist or a jealous lover. You or I might get murdered for a wallet, or a bag of dope, or it could be a random psycho job. But a national leader gets murdered for political purposes. Period.
   
   If Tony Blair of Vladimir Putin got murdered, would you believe it if the cops said it was just a 'lone nut' that did it? Heck no, you would lay all odds that it was conspiracy because that's the way politics work. Yet the U.S. government expects us to believe that kind of thing only happens in other countries. Give me a break!
   
   When RFK was murdered in 1968, there was no specific federal statute against murdering political candidates, so that the whole investigation was controlled by the LAPD and the LADA. Despite the image purveyed by TV's Dragnet, those agencies where famously, famously, corrupt in those days. And there was no federal oversight.
   
   Anyway, Turner and Christian's book is a really good place to get the most important core facts of the RFK assasination. The basic facts of the RFK case are, to put it mildly, completely bizarre and it is obvious that LAPD did a complete cover-up. The authors do not get into much speculation as to why the LAPD did the cover-up or who actually was behind the assasination, and based on my furhter readings, I think those who get into that territory tend to seem rather speculative. I give this book props for not going into that area without good evidence.
   
   A couple points of trivia. In the immediate aftermath of RFK's assasination and once it became obvious that LAPD was covering stuff up, a bunch of RFK's former boosters and some others formed an ad-hoc volunteer group to investigate the whole thing. This group included Robert Vaughn, a largely under-rated actor who played the Man From Uncle on TV. Robert Vaughn was one of many Hollywood types who had supported RFK. Paul LeMatt,one of the stars of 'American Graffiti,' was also part of this group, and there is a photo of them included in most editions. It's interesting to look back on that corrupt and violent period in America, and know that a few semi-idealistic Hollywood types were trying to push against the current for a little justice. Nowadays of course the media tries to demonize a star who does that, but that is another story.
   
   Anyway, this ad-hoc group eventually enlisted former FBI agent Bill Turner and TV reporter Jonn Christian, and they did what amounts to the first true public investigation into the RFK assasination. I believe that if you read this book you will be amazed at the facts.