What do You think about Corruption Of Blood (1996)?
The next in the series I've been following for the last several months, this one involving a reopening of the investigation of the JFK assassination. I was a little wary that this couldn't possibly work, and despite Herculean efforts by the real writer Michael Gruber, it didn't. The characters were just as engaging as in the other books in the series, and the legal and political difficulties were just as complicated and, as far as I can tell, realistic. And there is an author's note that says the solution is consistent with all the facts uncovered by the congressional investigation for which Tanenbaum really was legal counsel. (Needless to say, Oswald didn't do it.) But overall it was a bit unsatisfying, since it didn't really involve a prosecution. As the main character says, there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute anybody in 1963, and there's even less fifteen years later. And while the bad guys got discovered and dealt with to some degree, there was a sense of futility about the whole enterprise that left me unsatisfied. I was amazed to learn that "corruption of blood" is a phrase found in the U.S. Constitution, that the only crime explicitly defined there is treason, and that assassinating the president doesn't fit the definition.
—Jon
