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C. J. Floyd #6
The Mongoose Deception
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. Robert Greer brings his trademark complex but never confusing plot, colorful cast of characters, and stylistic brio to one of America’s enduring mysteries in this dazzling whodunit.
- GenresMystery
432 pages, Hardcover
First published October 9, 2007
2 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Robert Greer
25 books20 followersRobert Greer, author of the CJ Floyd mystery series, lives in Denver, where he is a practicing surgical pathologist, research scientist, and Professor of Pathology and Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He also edits the High Plains Literary Review, reviews books for National Public Radio, and raises Black Baldy cattle on his ranch near Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Series:
* C. J. Floyd
Series:
* C. J. Floyd
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 5 reviews
March 11, 2019
Greer's riff on the JFK assassination involves series character C. J. Floyd, former bail bondsman (now antique dealer) and his legion of friends and associates.
The body of a Louisiana hitman is unearthed during a tunnel collapse. The hitman was a worker during the construction of the tunnel and confided to a friend that he knew who was responsible for killing Kennedy: he was part of an assassination team in an earlier aborted scheme to assassinate the president in Chicago. The hitman suspects that his real role was to play the patsy as (he posits) Oswald played the patsy in Dallas. The friend he confides in, upon learning from the autopsy results that the hitman was murdered, journeys to Colorado to learn more. He is promptly murdered and the chase begins for Floyd, who is associated with, among many others, a retired Mafia chieftain, who was active during the Kennedy assassination and is now a suspect in all the murders, including that of JFK. Floyd's friends, associates and acquaintances all manage to put themselves in peril and / or become part of Floyd's team attempting to uncover the murderer(s) and discover, once and for all, the truth behind the Kennedy assassination. Local, state and federal agencies all become involved. One potentially intriguing character in the book is an FBI agent who has been tasked with the funny farm job of following up on all current assassination-related leads and stories. Unfortunately, he disappears for most of the book and is later trivialized in a fashion that seems totally pointless.
In THE MONGOOSE DECEPTION, Floyd and his allies are arrayed against powerful forces either seeking to sit on the truth or blame someone else for the dirty deeds. He is at first primarily concerned with solving a recent local murder and protecting a retired mafia don to whom he owes allegiance for a favor the don has done. The don is being framed for JFK and his enemies try to shoot him for good measure and of course one of Floyd’s close friends is a witness and therefore now a target. The riddles surrounding the JFK assassination are at first secondary, but soon emerge as Floyd’s primary investigation target. As in the other Floyd adventure I read, THE DEVIL’S RED NICKEL, Greer piles on characters intimately connected to Floyd and who all play key roles. Their actions sometimes advance the story and at other times are thinly disguised exposition. At least they are well drawn enough as individuals to easily track.
Unfortunately, too many of the book’s plot developments depend upon the characters doing dumb things. Late in the book, one of the characters says, “We should have known better”. Indeed. Dumbness and naivety emerge as artificial devices used to create peril, rather than producing peril with carefully plotted circumstances or through actual character flaws. We don’t believe Greer’s principal characters are dumb or naïve, because of their other thoughts and actions, so when they are dumb at critical moments, the resulting situations seem like contrived events for the sake of spectacle.
Greer does provide his solution to the JFK assassination and it is plausible enough on its own terms and it is of course impossible to disprove. Historically, short of accusing Tiny Tim or Mr. Rogers, it is hard to go wrong in this field. Greer’s solution, though credible, does fall somewhat flat dramatically for a number of reasons, but no spoilers here. The entire monster rally of suspects are marched on to the stage, but the author is skillful at maintaining suspense until near the end: is it one individual, one group, two or more groups acting together, etc.?
Greer’s scenes with ordinary people seem the most authentic. Not so much with organizations. One example. He uses a premise that seems ludicrous or at least very shaky to me: witnesses are either murdered or allowed to live and paid to relocate under new identities with no apparent criteria for who gets murdered and who gets to live. Greer attempts to define these criteria by showing how the characters present themselves at different times to be a greater or lesser threat to the guilty, but his logic seems arbitrary and self serving: depending upon the character’s usefulness to the story they are either dispatched or kept in place. Whoever / whatever is making these decisions seems to be rolling the dice unnecessarily. A clean sweep would seem safest. Greer also does a nasty by presenting a key character as being only what he claims to be without a earlier clue as to what he becomes: throughout most of the book, the character’s thoughts and actions are totally consistent and exclusive to what is later revealed at the very end to be merely a persona. Hate that.
Probably my last C. J. Floyd. In the two I have read, Floyd is someone to whom things happen, usually because he has made some bonehead mistake that seems unlikely because he is not a bonehead. He is also part of an ensemble cast that weaves in and out of the plot, sometimes undermining the tension that is naturally built up when there is single character or a small team in constant pursuit of a quarry. At times, Floyd (or Floyd and a partner) are hot on the trail and these sections of the two books I have read are the most well written. At other times, we suffer a lengthy visit with Aunty Fern or go down memory lane for a healthy dose of pathos, but for me these sections are cholesterol in the arteries of story progress; personal history and emotional contexts can be skillfully woven into a continuous series of plot events, as many writers have demonstrated. In Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer novels, for example, the emotional components of the story gain depth and seem authentic because their presence is continually intertwined with the events occurring during the story.
The body of a Louisiana hitman is unearthed during a tunnel collapse. The hitman was a worker during the construction of the tunnel and confided to a friend that he knew who was responsible for killing Kennedy: he was part of an assassination team in an earlier aborted scheme to assassinate the president in Chicago. The hitman suspects that his real role was to play the patsy as (he posits) Oswald played the patsy in Dallas. The friend he confides in, upon learning from the autopsy results that the hitman was murdered, journeys to Colorado to learn more. He is promptly murdered and the chase begins for Floyd, who is associated with, among many others, a retired Mafia chieftain, who was active during the Kennedy assassination and is now a suspect in all the murders, including that of JFK. Floyd's friends, associates and acquaintances all manage to put themselves in peril and / or become part of Floyd's team attempting to uncover the murderer(s) and discover, once and for all, the truth behind the Kennedy assassination. Local, state and federal agencies all become involved. One potentially intriguing character in the book is an FBI agent who has been tasked with the funny farm job of following up on all current assassination-related leads and stories. Unfortunately, he disappears for most of the book and is later trivialized in a fashion that seems totally pointless.
In THE MONGOOSE DECEPTION, Floyd and his allies are arrayed against powerful forces either seeking to sit on the truth or blame someone else for the dirty deeds. He is at first primarily concerned with solving a recent local murder and protecting a retired mafia don to whom he owes allegiance for a favor the don has done. The don is being framed for JFK and his enemies try to shoot him for good measure and of course one of Floyd’s close friends is a witness and therefore now a target. The riddles surrounding the JFK assassination are at first secondary, but soon emerge as Floyd’s primary investigation target. As in the other Floyd adventure I read, THE DEVIL’S RED NICKEL, Greer piles on characters intimately connected to Floyd and who all play key roles. Their actions sometimes advance the story and at other times are thinly disguised exposition. At least they are well drawn enough as individuals to easily track.
Unfortunately, too many of the book’s plot developments depend upon the characters doing dumb things. Late in the book, one of the characters says, “We should have known better”. Indeed. Dumbness and naivety emerge as artificial devices used to create peril, rather than producing peril with carefully plotted circumstances or through actual character flaws. We don’t believe Greer’s principal characters are dumb or naïve, because of their other thoughts and actions, so when they are dumb at critical moments, the resulting situations seem like contrived events for the sake of spectacle.
Greer does provide his solution to the JFK assassination and it is plausible enough on its own terms and it is of course impossible to disprove. Historically, short of accusing Tiny Tim or Mr. Rogers, it is hard to go wrong in this field. Greer’s solution, though credible, does fall somewhat flat dramatically for a number of reasons, but no spoilers here. The entire monster rally of suspects are marched on to the stage, but the author is skillful at maintaining suspense until near the end: is it one individual, one group, two or more groups acting together, etc.?
Greer’s scenes with ordinary people seem the most authentic. Not so much with organizations. One example. He uses a premise that seems ludicrous or at least very shaky to me: witnesses are either murdered or allowed to live and paid to relocate under new identities with no apparent criteria for who gets murdered and who gets to live. Greer attempts to define these criteria by showing how the characters present themselves at different times to be a greater or lesser threat to the guilty, but his logic seems arbitrary and self serving: depending upon the character’s usefulness to the story they are either dispatched or kept in place. Whoever / whatever is making these decisions seems to be rolling the dice unnecessarily. A clean sweep would seem safest. Greer also does a nasty by presenting a key character as being only what he claims to be without a earlier clue as to what he becomes: throughout most of the book, the character’s thoughts and actions are totally consistent and exclusive to what is later revealed at the very end to be merely a persona. Hate that.
Probably my last C. J. Floyd. In the two I have read, Floyd is someone to whom things happen, usually because he has made some bonehead mistake that seems unlikely because he is not a bonehead. He is also part of an ensemble cast that weaves in and out of the plot, sometimes undermining the tension that is naturally built up when there is single character or a small team in constant pursuit of a quarry. At times, Floyd (or Floyd and a partner) are hot on the trail and these sections of the two books I have read are the most well written. At other times, we suffer a lengthy visit with Aunty Fern or go down memory lane for a healthy dose of pathos, but for me these sections are cholesterol in the arteries of story progress; personal history and emotional contexts can be skillfully woven into a continuous series of plot events, as many writers have demonstrated. In Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer novels, for example, the emotional components of the story gain depth and seem authentic because their presence is continually intertwined with the events occurring during the story.
August 6, 2008
Take a dash of Kennedy assassination, add an arm that is found after an earthquake shakes a highway tunnel high in the Colorado Rockies. The arm is identified somehow as connected to the assassination. Far fetched? Not the way it is handled by Greer. Multi-layered, plausible and recommended.
September 5, 2008
I enjoyed this completely new perspective of what might have happened in the JFK assassination. Loved meeting the author at our book club.
September 15, 2011
Good mystery with a "conspiracy theory" about the JFK murder.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 5 reviews