French's Redemption

A rousing thriller encompassing JFK conspiracy theories and a CIA operative with something to prove.

Author Poblocki parlays his years as a government agency investigator into this fast-paced thrill ride centered on Michigan attorney general senior investigator Mike Peluso, a conspiracy theorist who believes the John F. Kennedy assassination was not the textbook homicide that history dictates. His beliefs are further fueled by meticulously culled Oswald-related speculative theories shared by American history instructor Jane Santana, former wife of a Cuban-American who happened to be the son of a militant brigade member involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Santana, herself a rabid conspiracy monger, encourages Peluso to self-publish his vastly speculative manuscript The Kennedy Assassination/Confluence of Interests/One Citizen’s View online and in print, and the two continue a torrid affair. The manuscript’s enormous popularity online pings the radar of CIA field operations veteran William Smith French, an imposing 60-year-old resistant retiree who’s hot on the writer’s heels to squelch the rumor mill Peluso’s book has set off. French is a man on a mission to restore his reputation since his last assignment in Afghanistan ended abominably, resulting in him being demoted to an involuntarily imposed “life of administrative ease.” Poblocki’s spadework in breathing life into French’s hawk-eyed, by-the-book surveillance of Peluso and Santana is impressive and exhilarating to read, as are the multiple Kennedy assassination theories presented. A former Department of Justice attorney (now in seclusion) directs Peluso to information that further supports his theories, but when French finally confronts his targets, the situation becomes deadly. Poblocki, who bases much of Peluso’s theories on documents found in the Warren Commission Report and elsewhere, is at his weakest when delving into his characters’ personal lives. Pages of overwritten sex scenes—e.g., “Her rear and breasts would earn an A on any twenty-five-year-old”; “Her mild-mannered exterior hid a lusty, sex-crazed wench”—belie the level of taste established in other scenes involving French’s noble allegiance to the CIA or Peluso’s enduring belief in the truth behind President Kennedy’s demise. Still, within French’s whirling, politically charged world, Poblocki lends his protagonist great command over an unnervingly authentic dominion.

Despite some unpolished prose, several thought-provoking hypotheses collide in a suspenseful story of subterfuge and veracity.