What do you think?
The Inspector's Opinion: The Chappaquiddick Incident
Midnight, July 18, 1969. A black Oldsmobile plunges over the side of a small bridge on an island off Martha's Vineyard. The young woman trapped inside the car drowns. Not ordinarily headline news, except that Senator Edward M. Kennedy claims to be the driver of that automobile.
The world now knows the tragedy as the Chappaquiddick Incident. Senator Kennedy's public explanation was greeted with skepticism, and the mystery surrounding the accident baffled and intrigued many people. In this novel, a spellbinding blend of fact and fiction, P. Faulkner Trulimann is one of the more curious of the skeptics. Hier to a vast fortune and with time on his hands, Trulimann prepares a preliminary file of newspaper articles, photographs, and interviews with Chappaquiddick natives. He then convinces his old and dear friend, Charles Darby, a retired Scotland Yard inspector, to apply his acute deductive powers to the problem and form an opinion of what really happened that July night.
What the Inspector has to go on is indeed sketchy. The transcripts of the closed-door Massachusetts inquest were not made public until months after the accident. But when the transcripts are finally released, Darby, Trulimann, and his young assistant Priscilla decide to test the Inspector's startling conclusion. They restage the inquest using selected friends to play the roles of the actual witnesses. As the players recite the authentic verbatim transcripts, the Inspector guides them through the intricate process by which he formed his opinion, pointing out the inconsistencies, the minute time differences, the loose ends, and the questions that were never asked.
The Inspector's Opinion is a rare sort of novel. Its basis is an enigmatic and complex historical event, yet its characters in search of a solution are fictional sleuths. Its conclusion is only a theory, but a theory that is totally believable, totally intriguing, and totally at odds with what we were told happened at Chappaquiddick.
MALCOLM REYBOLD is a former advertising executive. He lives in New York City.
The world now knows the tragedy as the Chappaquiddick Incident. Senator Kennedy's public explanation was greeted with skepticism, and the mystery surrounding the accident baffled and intrigued many people. In this novel, a spellbinding blend of fact and fiction, P. Faulkner Trulimann is one of the more curious of the skeptics. Hier to a vast fortune and with time on his hands, Trulimann prepares a preliminary file of newspaper articles, photographs, and interviews with Chappaquiddick natives. He then convinces his old and dear friend, Charles Darby, a retired Scotland Yard inspector, to apply his acute deductive powers to the problem and form an opinion of what really happened that July night.
What the Inspector has to go on is indeed sketchy. The transcripts of the closed-door Massachusetts inquest were not made public until months after the accident. But when the transcripts are finally released, Darby, Trulimann, and his young assistant Priscilla decide to test the Inspector's startling conclusion. They restage the inquest using selected friends to play the roles of the actual witnesses. As the players recite the authentic verbatim transcripts, the Inspector guides them through the intricate process by which he formed his opinion, pointing out the inconsistencies, the minute time differences, the loose ends, and the questions that were never asked.
The Inspector's Opinion is a rare sort of novel. Its basis is an enigmatic and complex historical event, yet its characters in search of a solution are fictional sleuths. Its conclusion is only a theory, but a theory that is totally believable, totally intriguing, and totally at odds with what we were told happened at Chappaquiddick.
MALCOLM REYBOLD is a former advertising executive. He lives in New York City.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
Malcolm Reybold
1 bookMr. Reybold, who was born in Atlanta, was a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology. He was director of marketing for Foote Cone & Belding and associate director of marketing at J. Walter Thompson Company and McCann-Erickson.
In 1962 he joined F. W. Dodge, a division of McGraw-Hill, from which he retired as publisher in 1965. In 1975, Saturday Review Press published his novel, ''The Inspector's Opinion: The Chappaquiddick Incident,'' which The New York Times Book Review described as ''a nice piece of camp.''
(Source: The New York Times, January 15th, 1988, Section A, P. 14, New York Edition.)
In 1962 he joined F. W. Dodge, a division of McGraw-Hill, from which he retired as publisher in 1965. In 1975, Saturday Review Press published his novel, ''The Inspector's Opinion: The Chappaquiddick Incident,'' which The New York Times Book Review described as ''a nice piece of camp.''
(Source: The New York Times, January 15th, 1988, Section A, P. 14, New York Edition.)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 14, 2009
Malcolm Reybold was an author, but he was not a writer. He was also an analyst, though not a fictionalist. In short, Mr. Reybold took a true-life event, and handed it over to a number of quasi-English characters to "solve" the mysteries involved.
The Chappaquiddick Incident, as it has become known worldwide, occurred on the night of July 18th-19th, 1969. It has since become one of the defining events of the 1960s Generation, along with the Lunar Landing and the Manson Family Murders (which also took place during that fateful year). Senator Ted Kennedy's Oldsmobile was discovered (as if incidentally) that Saturday morning, overturned, in Dike River on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Young Mary Jo Kopechne was still inside, drowned. Senator Kennedy provided a sketchy version of events, lacking the verbal celerity for which he was known (and had attributed to the trauma of having been the driver of said automobile).
Many aspects of his "official" version made no sense to the public: Why was the accident not reported until some nine hours after it allegedly took place? How could the Senator come to drive off of a bridge that he ought to have seen if he was as sober as he had claimed? And what were he and Miss Kopechne doing on that bridge at that hour? Many more unanswered questions arose, and this gave some reason to suspect that the whole truth was not given at the inquest.
Reybold took the official transcript of the Incident and condensed the verbiage to a more pointed dialogue between the Court and the witnesses, in the form of an impromptu "radio play," casting various acquaintances of narrator P. Faulkner "Truly" Trulimann. Inserted in key places are fragments of analysis made by character Charles Darby (a retired Scotland Yard Inspector with a formed opinion on the "true" events of that night). During this dinner party mystery, a potential solution is arrived at which proposes an explanation for many of the neglected details of the Inquest - various sounds heard by local residents, the time discrepancy of more than an hour between Kennedy's account and that of other witnesses, etc. And on the surface, the story the Inspector presents is plausible (if not wholly original).
The book falls apart on a couple of levels. First of all, Truly's discourse smacks with a brand of forced naviete the author presumably sensed within other mysteries originating from Great Britain (Dame Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, et al.). He comes across not as an American fascinated by an American tragedy, but as a proper English prat intent upon irritating others by speaking in a tone wholly unknown to a modern-day audience of any nationality. In fact, each of the characters wrestle with awkward, uncomfortable faux-English verbiage (save for those pages wherein they read from the script of the Inquest). A stilted love interest plays background filler, as does much of the secondary character interactions. Charming? Perhaps. But in this context, the superfluous chatter becomes meaningless, trite, and decidedly irritating.
Fortunately, this serves but a minor, unimportant role in the bulk of the novel. Unfortunately, the Inspector's opinions are formulated, explained, and expounded upon in the voice of Inspector Darby himself, giving way to this false ring of conversation once and for all.
Worth a read for the genuinely curious about the Chappaquiddick Incident (the foreshortened transcript robs the testimonies of their individual flavours, but does present them in a factual, no-nonsense tone), this novel will not likely appeal to fans of classic mysteries. It is a weak example of the genre. It will also not likely appeal to the pure non-fiction aficionado due to the grating nature of the fictionalized portions. To those willing to accept the novel for what it is (an explanation of one theory formulated in such a manner as to avoid directly accusing real-life key players of anything unproven), it is mostly unoffensive.
One critical portion of the "fiction" portion involves a tale recounted by female love-interest Priscilla, describing a near-drowning experience of her own. Having had her submerged vehicle drawn out of a body of water by French farmers utilizing nothing fewer than eight horses, Pricilla stepps from the water-logged car shaken, but unscathed. Upon her emergence, she was told that the locals had taken her for dead, but they had her extricated from the water because her presumed body "would be so wet, so cold, so lonely" in the French canal.
One may ask what the outcome could have been if only Senator Kennedy had the same sense for Miss Kopechne as these farmers had for the fictional Priscilla...
The Chappaquiddick Incident, as it has become known worldwide, occurred on the night of July 18th-19th, 1969. It has since become one of the defining events of the 1960s Generation, along with the Lunar Landing and the Manson Family Murders (which also took place during that fateful year). Senator Ted Kennedy's Oldsmobile was discovered (as if incidentally) that Saturday morning, overturned, in Dike River on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Young Mary Jo Kopechne was still inside, drowned. Senator Kennedy provided a sketchy version of events, lacking the verbal celerity for which he was known (and had attributed to the trauma of having been the driver of said automobile).
Many aspects of his "official" version made no sense to the public: Why was the accident not reported until some nine hours after it allegedly took place? How could the Senator come to drive off of a bridge that he ought to have seen if he was as sober as he had claimed? And what were he and Miss Kopechne doing on that bridge at that hour? Many more unanswered questions arose, and this gave some reason to suspect that the whole truth was not given at the inquest.
Reybold took the official transcript of the Incident and condensed the verbiage to a more pointed dialogue between the Court and the witnesses, in the form of an impromptu "radio play," casting various acquaintances of narrator P. Faulkner "Truly" Trulimann. Inserted in key places are fragments of analysis made by character Charles Darby (a retired Scotland Yard Inspector with a formed opinion on the "true" events of that night). During this dinner party mystery, a potential solution is arrived at which proposes an explanation for many of the neglected details of the Inquest - various sounds heard by local residents, the time discrepancy of more than an hour between Kennedy's account and that of other witnesses, etc. And on the surface, the story the Inspector presents is plausible (if not wholly original).
The book falls apart on a couple of levels. First of all, Truly's discourse smacks with a brand of forced naviete the author presumably sensed within other mysteries originating from Great Britain (Dame Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, et al.). He comes across not as an American fascinated by an American tragedy, but as a proper English prat intent upon irritating others by speaking in a tone wholly unknown to a modern-day audience of any nationality. In fact, each of the characters wrestle with awkward, uncomfortable faux-English verbiage (save for those pages wherein they read from the script of the Inquest). A stilted love interest plays background filler, as does much of the secondary character interactions. Charming? Perhaps. But in this context, the superfluous chatter becomes meaningless, trite, and decidedly irritating.
Fortunately, this serves but a minor, unimportant role in the bulk of the novel. Unfortunately, the Inspector's opinions are formulated, explained, and expounded upon in the voice of Inspector Darby himself, giving way to this false ring of conversation once and for all.
Worth a read for the genuinely curious about the Chappaquiddick Incident (the foreshortened transcript robs the testimonies of their individual flavours, but does present them in a factual, no-nonsense tone), this novel will not likely appeal to fans of classic mysteries. It is a weak example of the genre. It will also not likely appeal to the pure non-fiction aficionado due to the grating nature of the fictionalized portions. To those willing to accept the novel for what it is (an explanation of one theory formulated in such a manner as to avoid directly accusing real-life key players of anything unproven), it is mostly unoffensive.
One critical portion of the "fiction" portion involves a tale recounted by female love-interest Priscilla, describing a near-drowning experience of her own. Having had her submerged vehicle drawn out of a body of water by French farmers utilizing nothing fewer than eight horses, Pricilla stepps from the water-logged car shaken, but unscathed. Upon her emergence, she was told that the locals had taken her for dead, but they had her extricated from the water because her presumed body "would be so wet, so cold, so lonely" in the French canal.
One may ask what the outcome could have been if only Senator Kennedy had the same sense for Miss Kopechne as these farmers had for the fictional Priscilla...
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review