Yay! I FInished Reading Another Book - "The Reporter Who Knew Too Much" by Mark Shaw

Yep, I finally finished a book in 2017.  Given that it's August, I am not proud of this.

As regular readers here know, I don't read enough.  I buy books that intrigue me and some sit on shelves uncracked for years.  Such was the case of this non-fiction work by legal eagle Mark Shaw.  You can understand my attraction.  One of my guilty pleasures is the old TV game show "What's My Line."  It's easy to get sucked into that: virtually every episode is available on a You Tube channel. The other focus of this book is the JFK assassination and I have long been obsessed with that.

Once I opened "The Reporter Who Knew Too Much," I read it in about four hours.   Could.  Not.  Put.  It.  Down.  Wow.

Mark Shaw is a former criminal defense attorney and has also worked for some cable news networks. Fifty years after the suspicious death of famed newspaper reporter/columnist/TV panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, Shaw wanted to honor the hard-nosed, inquisitive aspects of Dorothy by totally investigating her demise. And, in a style and format reminiscent of your favorite CSI show, he does an amazing job laying it all out in the hopes that the Manhattan, NY DA office will reopen an investigation into this ice cold case.

For those of you in a condo under a rock, Dorothy Kilgallen was more than just a classy dame wearing a blindfold and trying to figure out a mystery guest on CBS every Sunday night at 1030PM.   She was a tenacious journalist back in the days when there was no fake news. After November 22, 1963, Kilgallen doggedly delved into the Warren Commission report and figured out there was something rotten in both Denmark and Dallas when the notion was pushed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone culprit.   After meeting with Oswald killer/stooge Jack Ruby, Kilgallen was onto something that was stored in her secret files.   

Fast forward to November 1965 and she is found dead in bed, apparently done in by an accidental mix of drugs and booze.   The file is also gone.  Hmmm. Don't you want to see this filmed?

In a painstakingly precise manner, Shaw presents all the possible scenarios presented by the inconsistencies of the NY police, the Medical Examiner, and just about anybody who touched this case.   Luckily, there are some Kilgallen associates still around to provide background.  It is clear that she was likely done in for knowing too much about what really happened to JFK.   But, by whom?

The FBI?

The CIA?

The Mafia?

A jealous husband?

A mystery man/lover named Ron Pataky who she allegedly rendezvoused with the night she died?

And what about how she was found dead in her bed?   In an outfit she wouldn't have been caught dead in, ahem?   With the air conditioning running on a cold November night?  With a particular drug in her system that she never took?

Unfortunately, the book can offer only hypotheses but it is terrific in its presentation of all of them.

Try to put this book down when you start it.   I dare you.   And then tell me that you still think the JFK murder wasn't an out-and-out conspiracy.

Bravo, Mark Shaw.   You did Dorothy proud.

Dinner last night: Leftover bratwurst and veggies.