My New Book: Assassinations

Available now is my new book, Assassinations: The Plots, Politics and Powers Behind History-Changing Murders.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

A deep dive into high stakes killings, conspiracies and crimes! Ruthless killers and murderers for hire: they are here, there, and everywhere. They lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce. They terminate on command. And, in the process, they change the course of the world. They are among the world’s most cold-hearted, deadly, and emotionless figures. They are assassins, and they have a long history of grievous deeds.

From the cunning, calculating, government-trained warriors to the psychopathic, homegrown freelancers, you can find them all in Assassinations: The Plots, Politics, and Powers behind History-changing Murders. Exposed are the hidden agendas as well as the open warfare. The cynical preparations and devastating aftermaths are laid bare. You will quickly find yourself immersed in a world that is filled with killings made to seem like suicides, murders that were designed to look like heart attacks or overdoses, and accidents that, in reality, were carefully orchestrated deaths.

Did Lee Harvey Oswald really kill JFK? Or was Oswald the patsy he claimed to be? 

Was Jack the Ripper, who terrified London in 1888, a madman or a ruthless secret agent of the British government?

Did the United States’ first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, kill himself, or was he thrown out of a window to his death in May 1949?

Did Marilyn Monroe take her own life in August 1962? Was a contract put out on her?

What led to the demise of Danny Casolaro, an investigative journalist who, at the time of his death in 1991, was investigating a powerful cabal known as “The Octopus”?

Was Diana, Princess of Wales, the victim of a car accident or of a carefully orchestrated plot?

Can sound waves and microwaves kill people at the flick of a switch?

Was John Lennon’s murder not at all what it appeared to be? 

These questions and many more are answered in Assassinations, and with more than 120 photos and graphics, this tome is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. It's a fascinating read that looks into how and why so many famous and influential figures just had to go!

Celebrities and the FBI

Back in 2007, my Celebrity Secrets book was published and revealed the extent to which - for decades - the FBI closely, and secretly, spied on a whole host of celebrities - of TV, movies, books and music.

The reasons were, of course, the usual ones: drugs, Mob links, communist ties, sex with politicians, and much more of an entertainingly scandalous nature!

Well, the FBI has recently added some new celebrity secrets to its Vault website, and here they are:

1. New material on John Lennon. I wrote about the FBI/Lennon file in Celebrity Secrets, but the new papers add to what we know about official interest in the dead Beatle.

2. The Orson Welles FBI file was actually released some time ago, but is newly-posted online for those that may want to read it.

3. And here's the 10-part FBI dossier on Charlie Chaplin, also now online.

4. Finally, the following may be of interest: In Celebrity Secrets I included a chapter on the strange story of the FBI, espionage and adventure, and Ernest Hemingway. It so happens that Loren Coleman has a cool new post on Hemingway that you can find right here. And, here's one more from Loren, on the "Hemingway Curse", an article from 2007 that is newly-updated.