Crossfire

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NOV 1, 1989

Twenty-five years after the event, assassination books continue to appear. Marrs, a Dallas-area journalist who teaches a college course on the event, has, however, produced a special one. Its nearly 600 pages are jammed with detail on every aspect of the shooting, the investigations, the suspicions that fell on the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans--all the usual suspects. For its comprehensiveness alone, this would be the one book for anyone seeking a really thorough examination of the assassination (but it sorely needs an index). Marrs is sensible and straightforward, giving every side of disputed questions, though it is clear that for him, as for most thoughtful people, the Warren Commission's picture of Oswald as a lone assassin doesn't work. The author talked to witnesses never officially interviewed, even offers never-before-seen pictures (though these contain nothing very startling). His conclusion: Kennedy made so many enemies in business, the military, the right wing, the mob, that his death became inevitable. He sees no Washington-based assassination plot, simply a willingness at the highest level (specifically Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover) to relax protective vigilance enough to allow the deed to be done.