The Patsy

by

D.J. Hupp

An imaginative, fantastical, and totally absorbing alternate vision of the "truth" behind the JFK assassination.

The Patsy is author D.J. Hupp's debut novel, and in it he tackles one of the most well-known and much speculated about events in American history: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. The story launches via an alternate timeline that blends historical detail and creative fiction to build an imaginative, exciting account of the events behind Kennedy's tragic death that day. 

In The Patsy, JFK was not the target of an assassin on 11/22/63, but rather went on to successfully fulfill his first four years in office and even won a second term. However, his policies set the US on a disastrous collision course with the USSR, which culminated in worldwide nuclear obliteration, except for a handful of government employees, scientists, and their families who made it into secret underground bunkers where they've survived for the past 19 years. During this time, research on time travel advanced to the point that the bunker leaders developed a plan to send an agent back in time to kill Kennedy before his actions could lead to the eventual destruction of civilization on the planet's surface. 

The main character is 41-year-old Wayne Bronson, a young West Point graduate, when he entered the bunker. An expert marksman, trained on the same bolt-action rifle Oswald owned, he is tapped by the bunker commander to be sent back in time, inhabiting both Oswald's mind and body, in order to implement their plan to kill the president as his motorcade passes through Dealey Plaza past the Texas Book Depository: an event which never occurred in their timeline. The author makes the setting and time period come alive through strategically placed references to books, music, movies, television shows, and iconic Dallas landmarks and institutions. As a contemporary of the time period and a local to boot, the story was a magical trip to the past. I was fascinated by how Wayne's exciting fictional mission was so cleverly woven into the historical record of the actual events, including the known movements of the major figures involved on the days before, during, and beyond the assassination itself, as well as the imagined aftermath of the changes the manipulation of events had on the new present and especially Wayne's life. 

With its clever mix of fact and fiction and the very human reactions of the formerly bunkered characters to their sudden freedom, I recommend THE PATSY to readers of speculative or historical fiction. 

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advance Review Copy from Reedsy Discovery.