Genre: Non-Fiction
Description:
“At 12.16am on Wednesday, June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was
shot and mortally wounded in the kitchen service pantry of the Ambassador Hotel,
Los Angeles. He had just won the California Primary, an important victory in
his quest for nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate in the US
Presidential election late that year. A little over 24 hours later, he was
pronounced dead.
A 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, was
captured in the pantry with a smoking gun in his hand. Eyewitnesses had seen
him step out in front of Kennedy and begin shooting with a small calibre
revolver. He fired all eight bullets in its chamber. In April 1969, Sirhan was
convicted of Robert Kennedy’s murder and the wounding of five others. He was
sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. He has been in prison
– often in solitary confinement – ever since. Fifteen applications for parole
have been rejected.
That is
the official history of the murder of Robert F. Kennedy. Now, on the 50th
anniversary of the assassination, award-winning investigative journalists Tim
Tate and Brad Johnson uncover the true story.
This book is the result of more than 25 years’ painstaking forensic
work. The authors have scrutinised more than 100,000 official documents,
located previously unknown recordings, and conducted original new interviews
with key figures in the case.
They show that Sirhan could not have fired the fatal bullets, reveal
detailed evidence of a murderous conspiracy involving organised crime, and
disclose CIA documents detailing successful experiments to create a
hypno-programmed political assassin. The book also unmasks the likely identity
of one of the most enduring mysteries in the case – the infamous ‘Girl in the
Polka Dot Dress’.”
Author:
Tim Tate is a British documentary film-maker and the author of
numerous non-fiction books.
Brad Johnson is an award-winning writer, editor, producer and
television news anchor.
Appraisal:
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. Was it going be a big
conspiracy theory? Was what it said going to seem credible? For the tl;dr
crowd, the answers to those questions are no and yes.
The somewhat more detailed explanation is that the book does a good
job of explaining not only the official story and how it came to be, but also
pointing out where that story has issues. Unlike a conspiracy theory, they
don’t point fingers and spin yarns with conclusions about who did what and why,
instead just laying out the facts and clues, leaving it to the reader to draw
their own conclusion. I certainly found the evidence they presented to be
disconcerting. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
FYI:
Uses UK spelling conventions.
Format/Typo
Issues:
A small number of proofing misses.
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 95-100,000 words
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