A whistleblower looks too deeply into a president’s assassination in this darkly satiric conspiracy thriller from the author of The Manchurian Candidate.
It has been more than a decade since the assassination of US President Timothy Kegan, who was gunned down while riding in a motorcade through the streets of Philadelphia. The “lone gunman” responsible was arrested and convicted, and the country has moved on.
President Kegan’s half-brother Nick tries to move on as well—until he overhears the deathbed confession of a man who claims to have been a second shooter. 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.
Winter Kills is an outrageously dark and funny take on the John F. Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy furor that followed it, from the master storyteller who brought you The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi’s Honor.
Richard Condon (1915–1996) is a political novelist from New York who wrote over 26 satirical thrillers throughout a prolific careerdealing with themes of political corruption, greed, and abuse of power. Before his career as a novelist, Condon served in the US Merchant Marines and later became a Hollywood publicist, agent, and advertising writer. Condons best-selling works include The Manchurian Candidate and the Prizzi series, dealing with the life of a crime family in New York. The Manchurian Candidate was made into a movie twice, once in 1962 and again in 2004. The 1962 movie starred Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her role.