WWW.WEDNESDAY

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

PS I can no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.

1. What are you currently reading? Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi. Buckle up, Buttercups! This is a deep dive, more than 1500 pages, into the JFK assassination. It's written by a lifetime lawyer, Vincent Bugliosi, best-known for convicting Charles Manson and his "family" after the Sharon Tate murders. In private practice, he successfully defended a high-profile murder suspect. What you need to know about Mr. Bugliosi is this: while he has enormous respect for the victims in his cases, he treats their murders as crimes. He assumes nothing and simply follows the evidence. The murder of the President may have been the crime of the century, but it was a homicide and a staggering amount of forensics point to only one man.

Lee Harvey Oswald did it, folks. He acted alone. The evidence is overwhelming. And even if all the evidence didn't point to Oswald, there is nothing credible that points to anyone else. Bugliosi takes each conspiracy theory and debunks it with verifiable facts.

Bugliosi maintains that conspiracy theorists are "patriotic kooks." I think he's too kind. There's nothing patriotic about distorting American history for your own amusement. Or about casting aspersions on the men of the Warren Commission or -- far worse -- Officer JD Tippit (tell me again how you "support the blue") or spewing QAnon drivel. Especially when a real-life conspiracy is unraveling before our eyes (the wife of a Supreme Court Justice admitted texting the White House Chief of Staff and called the 2020 election "a heist"; yeah, that's normal).

Whenever I see the Kennedys splattered by WWG1WGA mud, I'm reminded that Jackie referred to much of what had been written about her and her family as "the river of sludge that will go on and on." The lady herself died in 1994, long before this book was published. While I don't think she would have read it, I'm certain she would have appreciated it.

 

2. What did you recently finish reading? Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet by MC Beaton. This is the second book I've read in this series about a successful London PR exec who retired to a quiet village in the country. She's bored and finds herself getting involved with the lives of her neighbors, people she tends to dismiss as bumpkins but is coming to care about, despite herself.

 

This book begins with her crushing on her neighbor, but he seems uninterested so she turns her attention to the handsome new vet. When the vet turns up dead, the police declare his death an unfortunate accident, but Agatha decides it's murder and sets out to prove it.

I enjoy spending time with Agatha in Cottswold. I especially like her platonic relationship with Det. Bill Wong, a young man with whom she appears to have nothing in common, yet they are frank with and fond of one another. The thing is, though, I'm not all that crazy about these mysteries as mysteries. The plotting is forgettable and more than a little lazy. This book ends with the killer tying up all the loose ends for us by confessing ... and confessing ... and confessing at a moment when s/he would most likely in real life use that time destroying evidence or getting away. God, that annoys me!

3. What will read next? I don't know.