Winter Kills

by Richard Condon

n WINTER KILLS, Richard Condon probes one of the most significant events in America's 20th the assassination of a president. Timothy Kegan is shot in a Philadelphia motorcade; a presidential commission condemns a lone psychopath as the killer. Fourteen years later, Tim's half-brother, Nick, learns through a deathbed confession that Tim was the victim of a mysterious conspiracy. As Nick attempts to find the real assassin, he encounters oil kings, movie queens, venal police, organized crime, the CIA, and labor unions -- all eager for power and control. The ending is guaranteed to surprise and horrify!

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Novels, Espionage, Satire, Suspense

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Richard Thomas Condon was a satirical and thriller novelist best known for conspiratorial books such as The Manchurian Candidate.

After service in the United States Merchant Marine, Condon achieved moderate success as a Hollywood publicist, ad writer and Hollywood agent. Condon turned to writing in 1957. Employed by United Artists as an ad writer, he complained that he was wasting time in Hollywood and wished to write a novel. Without Condon's knowledge, his boss, Max E. Youngstein deducted amounts from his salary then fired him after a year giving him the amount of money he had deducted in the form of a Mexican bank account and the key to a house overlooking the ocean in Mexico. Youngstein told him to write his book. His second novel, The Manchurian Candidate (1959), featured a dedication to Youngstein. The movie made from it in 1962, made him famous. Prizzi's Honor (1982) was likewise made into a successful movie.

Condon's writing was known for its complex plotting, fascination with trivia, and loathing for those in power; at least two of his books featured thinly disguised versions of Richard Nixon. His characters tend to be driven by obsession, usually sexual or political, and by family loyalty. His plots often have elements of classical tragedy, with protagonists whose pride leads them to a place to destroy what they love. Some of his books, most notably Mile High (1969), are perhaps best described as secret history. And Then We Moved to Rossenara is a humorous autobiographical recounting of various places in the world where he had lived and his family's 1970s move to Rossenarra, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland.

Reviews

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

An almost unbelievably naive protagonist, Nick Thirkield, hears the dying confession of a man who claimed to have murdered his half-brother, former US President Tim Kegan, and decides to go in search of the people behind the killing. He suspects, rightly, that there has been a cover-up. As the privileged son of a rich businessman, he has almost unlimited resources with no financial constraints.

He goes to visit those he suspects of involvement in his brother's killing with no apparent misgivings, and they seem quite willing to confess to him their involvement in a crime, which, if proved, would carry a severe penalty. and are quite happy to point him to other people involved, with no apparent fear of repercussions. And even when there are repercussions, Nick blunders on, undeterred.

The author clearly intended it to reflect the Kennedy assassination by incorporating details of that, right down to the "grassy knoll" whose function is equally obscure in both cases.

I took this book out of the library because Andre Jute, in his book Writing a Thriller said that Richard Condon was one of the best thriller writers around. So I, wanting an example of a paradigm case thriller, read this book. But there was little that was thrilling about it. And it broke one of the cardinal rules that books about writing thrillers lay down: no info dumps. This entire book was an info dump.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marx plus Freud. The great conspiracy novel based on the Kennedy assassination. The scenario is actually plausible! Plot machinations about how the world really works (vide: military industrial complex) aside the discussion about how public opinion is manipulated by the fictions government devises is acutely prescient to the present moment. As one character says, We've come a long way since Goebbels. Condon's style is inimitable in its simultaneous sweep and attention to detail. Funny too.

[Kathy Manns055 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Over-written, full of fatuous goose chases, silly male/female relationships, and then a predictable ending to boot! This is a pallid fictional take on a Kennedy-like president and the conspiracy to cover up those responsible for his assassination. You can easily miss this book. Rounded rating up - really rates a 1.5 from this reader.

[Terri Weitze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a roller coaster. The plot is clearly based on the Kennedy assassination. And it is full of more theories than you can find on the internet! Moving at a lightening pace; 11 years after the assassination, it keeps you breathless as the deceased President's half brother tries to find out what really happened that fateful day. Beautifully crafted and written.

[Drew Raley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Above-average politico-comedy-thriller that goes over the top into genius on its final page. An assemblage of disparate JFK assassination theories are cross-wired and spark against one another with ferocity and propulsion. The ill-fated movie adaptation almost works, and is worth a rental.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Old man Kennedy is as big a crook as we've got in this country, and I don't like it one bit that he bought his son the presidential nomination."---Harry S Truman. Don't worry, Harry. In WINTER KILLS Richard Condon sets things aright by having the Kennedy sons, under pseudonyms, of course, pay for the sins of the father. WINTER KILLS does for the JFK assassination what THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE did for McCarthyism viz. savage all American politics with a broad brush. Look for a minor character, Dave Diamond (wink, wink) who is posted to assassinate the assassin.

[E. Kahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Condon takes on the Kennedy assassination.

Whodunit? Well, it's a Condon book, so the more morbidly counterintuitive your theory is, the likelier...

[Elli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truly didn't think I'd finish this book, took me VERY long to reach the final page but here I am. Didn't really enjoy the read, knew from very early on who the murderer was which made it tiresome to follow the main character on his lengthy discovery journey. Some passages were okay to read tho. Possibly I just wasn't the right audience. Won't read it again

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: a fictionalized Kennedy assassination? President Timothy Kegan is shot in a motorcade; a conspiracy is uncovered fourteen years later.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dizzying plot, weaving the many threads and theories around the assassination of JFK into a tense, fast moving thriller

[Paul Dinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did read this when I was younger and couldn't go out to see the movie. I had no memory of it though. I don't know what inspired me to pick it up again. It isn't a bad novel and Condon is an effective writer. However, it does have an idiot plot, and I just couldn't see how Nick, the main character never seems to think who the bad guy could be, despite being directed by him, introduced to all the people whom are then killed. Hello, Marty McFly! Still it moves at a good pace.

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, trippy read. There are so many red herrings in it, I feel like I ate a weeks' worth of full English breakfasts.

[Carlos Mock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Winter Kills (Hardcover) - by Richard Condon

Timothy (Tim) Kegan was a womanizer. He was also the son of Thomas (Tom) Xavier Kegan (Pa), one of the richest men in the US. Tom buys the presidency for Tim, but, unfortunately, he was killed in Philadelphia while driving in a motorcade on February 22, 1960. After an extensive investigation by the Pickering Commission, it was determined that a lone man, Willie Arnold, shot the President.

Fourteen years later, Tims's half-brother, Nicholas (Nick) Thiskiell Kegan is called by his best friend and business partner, Keifetz, to witness the confession of a dying man, Arthur Tucker (Tuck) Fletcher who claims he was the "second shooter" and, in fact, the one who actually killed the President, since Willie had missed when he shot the President.

Suddenly Nick’s embroiled in a Kafkaesque conspiracy that stretches from Washington DC to Cuba and all the way into England’s Court of St. James. He’s surrounded by mobsters, oil magnates, crooked cops, religious leaders, CIA “spooks,” Hollywood celebrities, and international power brokers—including the renowned Washington hostess, fixer, and femme fatale, Lola Camonte—all of whom seem intent upon doing him in. And the closer Nick comes to the startling truth about the assassination, the less he really wants to know.

I got the book because I was interested in the plot, and also because Richard Condon wrote the Manchurian candidate. I was very disappointed. The book is supposedly narrated from the third-person point of view, but the point of view changes from one paragraph to the next. The characters are "caricatures" and I didn't care for them. The plot is a farce, and I thought it went everywhere - confusing me at times. The book is a take on the John F. Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy furor that followed it

I didn't care for the book, and I don't recommend it.

[Jreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

A week ago I decided to go through my whole wall of books in their shelves. I decided rather than keep borrowing books from the library and buying books I would reread a lot of my books. The first one I picked was Winter Kills by Richard Condon.

This was published in 1974. It is a beautifully made book with thick, high-quality paper. It sold back then for $7.95. I am probably the second owner because although I believe I read this within the past 30 years, it has the initial owners name written in it. And now as I look at it I realize it was my former husband's grandpa. We must have gotten it after the grandma's death.

The time frame when this was published was around the same time when the Godfather and numerous other detailed mob stories and political regimens were published.

It really doesn't travel well after 50 years. And I read it because I realized the author had written many of the movies I grew up with.

There are so many different characters. Women are very demoralized. This is a focus on white males with money and persons of race, non-protestant, anyone wasn't in the pocket of some horrible politician or monster --are painted in a very negative manner.

It's not a pleasant book. I dragged through this in 2 weeks because the names of persons change constantly. There's just so much that is now considered politically incorrect. It's a difficult book about bad people who are not happy even though they have huge amounts of money and influence. If that was the intention of the book, it was met.

[Myles McHale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Toggled between the 3 or 2 Star rating : on one hand the plot is well paced and regardless of quality it’s not like you’re ever BORED! There’s enough twists and double backs here to keep even the most jaded thriller / mystery head at least on their toes. For the wild contrivances alone I was entertained.
On the other, the writing is constantly swinging between dime-store paperback sleaze and almost incoherent political potboiler, the plot uses changing of scenery and time periods to distract from how many plot holes it’s trying to fill in, and all the characters are paper thin and sometimes called upon to do nothing more than explain a plot twist and then be killed OFFSTAGE of the present action.
Lots of characters just saying “Oh ,{Character Name} ? They found him dead this morning” and it gets old.

I hear the movie is pretty good so fingers crossed!

[Penrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.6 stars

I have read one other novel by Condon, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. It is quite a bit better than this one.

This book is a readable and fun fiction reimagining who might have killed an American President in 1962, but the layers of intrigue and corruption are not very plausible if one is seriously considering how President Kennedy was actually murdered.

There is a peculiar tone here, as if Condon is not much interested in his main character, or really in any of his characters. The love story is non-existent and the female are characters given little to do. One of the bad guys appears to get away. The last scene, in which the principal bad guy dies, ends on a striking image.

Overall, this was a pleasant read, a so-so book.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A twisted skew of the Dark Of Heartness, the American Ur-Conspiracy.

Some perceptive rants about the truthiness of American society and those who spin it. A pageturner with a complex plot as befits its subject matter. Some fun with roman a cléf assignments (I think I was able to figure out that Joe Diamond stood for Jack Ruby - you can't fool ME! And gender-swapping Frank for Lola wasn't much of a puzzler either.)

Good stuff, all in all. Trash, but passionately written trash.

[Franc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is fairly decent when compared to other 1970s airport-paperback-rack thrillers. However, if you want a much better JFK assassination conspiracy novel, read Charles McCarry's fantastic The Tears of Autumn.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Condon's imagination has worked wonders on this satirical tale of the conspiracy leading to the murder of President Kennedy by his own people. Authors like to push in some truth, or what they think is truth, even in fictional works like this one. I am a fan of Richard Condon's writing and find it hard to not like everything I have read from him so far.

[M.A. McRae · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story appears to be such a cliche these days - that the FBI and powerful government officials are all in the conspiracy to cover up facts. I have seen it so often in books and in films. But the book was published in 1974. Maybe it was not a cliche in 1974.

[DD · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this book because I noticed he had also written the Manchurian Candidate. Well this was ridiculous. I'm just surprised I bothered to finish it.

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1976. Black comedic novel about a Presidential assassination which has parallels to the Kennedy killing.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Condon’s Winter Kills is based on the Kennedy assassination: a US president riding in a motorcade is killed by rifle shots, a lone gunman is arrested and then himself shot dead , a government commission makes the loner’s guilt official. The novel then works the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination into a kind of ultra-paranoid fantasia of corruption, betrayal, and duplicity. The novel serves as a kind of compendium of thriller tropes: characters we meet in one chapter turn up mysteriously dead in the next, a character reported dead later turns up alive, the protagonist meets with people who later appear never to have existed, any number of characters turn out not to be the person they claim to be. Condon plays fair with the reader and resolves, as far as I can recall the various plot threads, all the blind alleys, misrepresentations, and false memories before ending the book with what we are evidently meant to take as the “real” solution to the conspiracy. Whether the solution is at all plausible will be up to each individual reader; it does have a certain psychological appeal, if not making much sense economically or or politically. I found the cynical portrayal of the US political system and the almost unlimited power men of great wealth exercise within it, though all too believable in the real world, incompatible with the rather neat resolution of the story.
I found the portrayal of sex in the book laughably ridiculous, as if it had been researched through a subscription to Playboy. It veered between the indiscriminate number-crunching of the “Catalogue Aria” from Don Giovanni and the explosive concupiscence of Tex Avery’s Wolfie. The sexuality of the one gay character (the Jack Ruby stand-in) was characterized by his fetish for policemen.
Those who have seen the film may be interested to know that the memorable climactic scene involving the American flag was taken directly from the last page of Condon’s novel.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Condon’s “Winter Kills” (3 stars) is another in the Kennedy conspiracy genre, this one much stronger on the fiction and weaker on the facts. While this presentation jumps back and forth on the timeline to an extent, the real bounding is from place to place – covering parts of the petroleum industry, organized crime, movie stars, and labor unions. Winter Kills uses fictional characters to probe the assassination, beginning with the president himself – Timothy Kegan. The premise – initiated through a deathbed confession – is that the assassination was an involved conspiracy and not a lone gunman. Winter Kills came out just 10 years after the actual event, earning Condon points for an early version of the conspiracy theory. Condon’s book can be compared to another in this category.

DeLillo’s “Libra” (4 stars) is another Kennedy conspiracy book, and a very entertaining one in blending fact and fiction. This is not a linear presentation of the event, but one that flashes backward and leaps forward over the actual timeline. While telling the familiar storyline – after all we know what the end is – DeLillo weaves multiple viewpoints of numerous characters talking about Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, and includes sections of Oswald and Ruby talking about themselves. Libra contains few if any fictional individuals and locales, it is the Kennedy assassination with the names and places we are familiar with. You’ll read 400 pages of backstory and 50 of the event unfolding – the theme being that the Kennedy assassination was an accident.

[Dan Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fictional take on the JFK assassination is simply not as interesting as the real story. Further, this 1974 book is very dated. Bringing out the worst of the 1970s, it is permeated with a macho cynicism, a cynical machismo, and no shortage of pop-Freudianism. It does little to illuminate the actual truth of the assassination conspiracy. Indeed, it helps prop up what Vince Salandria referred to as the "false mystery" of the plot. One strong point, however, is the illustration of what one of the probable conspirators, James Jesus Angleton of the CIA, referred to as the "wilderness of mirrors," in which sheep-dipping, infiltration, and multiple, complex cover stories help to obfuscate facts and shield culprits. And the parody of Jack Ruby as "Joe Diamond," whose affinity for cops reaches the level of sexual obsession, is funny because it is nearly true. But overall the nonfiction I have read on this subject provides more insight and is more engaging to boot.

[Natalie Nestor · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can listen beyond the clinical, staccato, Dragnet cadence, you've got quite a political thriller. In the late sixties & early seventies, I can see how this would be cast as "satire" but given the current administration of 2017, it's quite scary.

An oil baron's son is groomed and elected President. Shortly thereafter, he is assassinated. A thinly veiled "alternate scenario" of President Kennedy's assassination. The half-brother witnesses the second rifleman's deathbed confession. So the story begins...

A book club could spend a month discussing the female characters, and feminism. There are several character monologues that made me take pause regarding entitlement, greed, and yes...alternate scenarios and alternate truth.

"Life & truth have been turned into diverting, gripping, convincing scenarios. All they require is...a fixed target upon which to project the new truth." Richard Condon, "Winter Kills"

[Robert Colquhoun · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting because of how Condon incorporates the Kennedy family and the JFK assassination into the story. I was pretty sure I knew the culprit very early on in the story and my opinion never changed. Turns out I was right. I would have liked it better had it not been quite so anticlimactic. Basically, it's a story about how money brings power, corruption and, to the extreme, a complete loss of moral fibre.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice plot, boring twist-ending that explains it all. I love the movie based on this novel. Directed by William Richert and starring James Bridges as Nick and John Huston as Pa, it adds lots of really dry, black humor to the story. The movie also has a much better, more ambiguous ending than the book.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very "old school" 1974 political thriller from the writer of the Manchurian Candidate, loosely based on the investigation into killing Pres. Kennedy in 1963. If you like spy stories and political thrillers, this might be for you.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant "fictional" account of a president who is killed and his Brother investigating it.