The JFK conspiracy The secret plot to kill Kennedy--and why it failed

Move over, Lee Harvey Oswald. The subject of this newest book by Meltzer and Mensch (The Nazi Conspiracy, 2023) is not the infamous JFK rifleman but another person with a plan to murder America's thirty-fifth president--a plan that failed. On December 11, 1960, Richard Paul Pavlick, a retired postal worker, loaded his car with dynamite and drove it to where Kennedy and his entourage were preparing to leave for Sunday-morning Mass. Pavlick intended to drive that car into Kennedy's, destroying himself and the president-elect, but changed his mind when he saw Mrs. Kennedy and her children. Several days later, Pavlick was arrested and began his slow fade into history. It seems incredible that such an episode involving one of our most studied presidents isn't more widely known, but that is the hallmark of Meltzer and Mensch, who have also written celebrated accounts of failed assassination attempts on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and the triumvirate of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. This one is just as riveting, a brisk narrative with not-too-much detail and unnerving parallels to current events.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Meltzer and Mensch's tellings of little-known historical events have gained quite a following, and the fact that the subject is the beloved JFK will only add to the book's appeal.

Novelist Meltzer and historian Mensch tell the story of a failed assassination of JFK. Having written three other books on attempted assassinations, the co-authors now turn their attention to a little-known episode in the political career of John F. Kennedy. The book begins on the day of the attempt in question, Dec. 11, 1960, in Palm Beach, Florida, where the former senator, now president-elect, was readying himself to take the oath of office and occupy the White House. As JFK exited his family estate with his wife and young daughter, an older man was waiting in a 1950 Buick sedan, "not a fancy or noteworthy vehicle." The moment passed without incident (the authors go on to theorize as to why), even though the Buick was equipped with seven sticks of dynamite connected by wire to a small trigger mechanism, powerful enough to "blow up a mountain." From this climactic moment, the authors shift backward in time, tracing the rise of the young JFK, starting with his heroic actions on an armed mobile patrol boat in the South Pacific during World War II. In alternating chapters, the book details the life of Richard Pavlick, the man in the Buick: From small-town New England, as a young man he had served briefly in the Army; now he was "full of grievances" and was known to his neighbors as a prolific complainer and writer of angry letters. Pavlick, "extremely anti-Kennedy and anti-Catholic," became "intensely focused" on the Kennedy-Nixon election and was galvanized to act when Kennedy won. The authors, experienced writers of this blend of popular history and thriller, keep the chapters short and punchy, with cliffhangers at the end of each one. This brisk and vivid history of a 1960 assassination plot has the instincts of a thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.