Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of The Mongoose Deception by Robert Greer. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
The Mongoose Deception by Robert Greer
A C. J. Floyd Mystery
North Atlantic Books (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-58394-192-4 (1583941924)
ISBN-13: 978-1-58394-192-8 (9781583941928)
Publication Date: October 2007
List Price: $25.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): When Cornelius McPherson, a former highway maintenance man, finds himself trapped in a tunnel he helped create decades earlier, he's horrified to discover the well-preserved, frozen arm of a fellow worker. McPherson remembers a secret the man whispered to him-that he knew who assassinated John F. Kennedy. When McPherson also turns up dead, CJ Floyd steps in to sort out the details, in the process going on his own hunt for the presidential assassin. CJ's journey is a retrospective trek that has him fielding CIA plots, mafia dons, and Cuban conspirators. But it's not until he realizes that there were two attempts on Kennedy's life prior to his actual assassination in 1963-one in Chicago and one in Tampa-that he's able to hone in on who might have really killed the president. The investigation takes him from the pristine mountains of Colorado to the muggy swamps of Louisiana, and ultimately leads him to a grieving, long-silent, Louisiana backwoods Creole mother who may hold the key to what happened.
Review: Robert Greer's sixth C. J. Floyd mystery, The Mongoose Deception, is an exceptionally gripping fictional account of those involved in the plans for the "final" assassination of John F. Kennedy. The all too real and colorful characters include various lawmen, a variety of mobsters, Mafia dons and their hit men, plus a couple of mothers, wives and lovers.
“Mongoose” was the code name set up by Robert Kennedy, JFK's brother and attorney general, for a secret project to depose Fidel Castro following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. The premise of this thriller is that before the President's assassination on November 24, 1963, there were at least two previous attempts on his life: one in Chicago and one in Tampa.
The books begins in the present on Highway I-70 as it goes through the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel in a mountain in Colorado. This massive roadway was dug through the mountain and completed nearly four decades ago by the Straight River Tunnel Crew, as they were called by Cornelius McPherson. Just two days before his retirement, Cornelius, now the Colorado Department of Transportation’s chief Eisenhower Tunnel inspector, was walking through the tunnel when an earthquake rumbled through the mountain. The tremor loosened some tiles and exposed, buried in the concrete, a frozen arm and hand bearing a tattoo. Cornelius recognized the arm of that belonging to a fellow worker, a man who had long ago told him he knew the true identity of the man who actually assassinated the President in 1963. Shortly thereafter the man, known only to McPherson as Ducane, disappeared and was never seen by anyone again.
Cornelius is suddenly murdered, and C. J. Floyd reluctantly agrees to look into the circumstances surrounding his death. Through a series of flashbacks, Greer weaves a tale of conspiracy introducing the cast of characters that plotted a deception surrounding Kennedy's assassination. Floyd's quest for the truth leads him from Colorado to the swamplands of Louisiana where he finds a link from the past to the present.
As a conspiracy thriller, The Mongoose Deception works well, effectively mixing historical fact into a fictional story. It's yet another spin on the Kennedy assassination, a subject that seems likely to inspire writers well into the future, and for the most part succeeds in captivating the reader's attention. Floyd's role is relatively minor, however, so readers of the series expecting to see him "solve" a case may be somewhat disappointed.
Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of The Mongoose Deception and to FSB Associates for providing a copy of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
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