Once upon a time in Camelot

the long version

"The title of this nail-biter is a deceiver. Yes, it's the Kennedys, here called the McCormacks, and, yes, it's the sixties, here called the seventies. An alternate universe like ours, but not. This president, aglow with Hollywood glamour, gets to live out two terms. His kid brother, the hard-edged one, gets a term of his own. The funhouse distortions continue. The Vietnam War, once popular and eagerly boosted by the brothers, is so out of favor it's threatening their survival. Now a once-loyal Pentagon analyst can prove the McCormacks have been lying about the war from the beginning, and the analyst is about to go public. (Remember Daniel Ellsberg?) The younger McCormack commissions a hit. He wants the analyst dead. The heft of the novel is the changing dynamic as killer and victim draw closer, and it's gripping, even in a time when people under 50 seem to think of Vietnam mainly as a tourist destination. When the expected violence happens, it's unusually moving because we've come to know both men well..."