Ask Not by Max Allan Collins

After reading this book called Ask Not by Max Allan Collins, I must read the other books that he had written earlier, Bye Bye Baby, and Target Lancer.  Ask Not is a fictionalized tale of a detective who opens the novel with the recognition that he is likely a target of a killer.  His family may be in danger as well since his son was with him when a car deliberately attempted to hit him.  This threat to his life causes him to try to reach out to the people who may be setting him for a hit to understand that he is not to be considered a loose end.  He is the main detective in the A1 Detective Agency that he owns and supervises.

This is a fascinating story about the Kennedy assassination as seen through the eyes of this master detective who has had a connection to the attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, a bungled job called Mongoose which failed.  He had recognized two of the Cubans who were in the car that deliberately tried to run him down as those who he had known from the earlier attempt to assassinate Kennedy when in Chicago.  This action takes him to both Dallas, Texas, after the Kennedy assassination and to New Orleans to meet up with organized crime leader Uncle Carlos,  a short squat Italian who is kingpin of crime in Louisiana and Texas.

After meeting with Uncle Carlos and having been given a tour of Uncle Carlos's  properties in the Bayou, Nate Heller has apparently accomplished his mission which was to assure Uncle Carlos that he is not to be feared by the mob.   But that he would do anything to defend himself and his family if necessary.  It would appear that Nate Heller has the full respect of the gangsters who own Lousiana and Texas.

So with that accomplished, we travel with Nate in his analysis and study of the Kennedy assassination, dissecting it with the help of insiders which include strippers, dirty and clean cops,and  CIA and FBI personnel.  Very carefully, and with great skill, Nate destroys the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald could have committed this crime at all.  By the time one finishes this very well researched and carefully plotted novel, one realizes that this author knows a lot about more than just the Kennedy assassination but then after all he is writing about a detective who is a snoop.  Max Allan Collins is a very interesting author who uses his detective as a means for learning and exposing government secrets that frankly I am inclined  to believe should be kept secret.

I will not spoil anyone's interest in this book by giving away the plot and its many secrets.  Suffice it to say that nobody in the USA is ever going to be satisfied with any solution to the Kennedy mystery. Each and every year, another author can take a crack at it...Nobody will ever solve it to anyone's total satisfaction.  

But Nate Heller convinces us quite well that the Warren Commission's findings are pure hooey!

That's government for you!