One might think a new novel skillfully weaving the known facts of the Kennedy assassination with many threads of conspiracy theorists and pure imagination would yield a tiresome read.

Robert Shows has done the weaving, but the result is a highly readable, fast-paced book, A Sentence of Death (2012).

With sharp eye and sure hand, the artist not only recreates the era of President Kennedy’s murder in a palpable presence; he also draws compelling, believable characters and keeps the reader’s mind keen for the next adventure.

Shows brings in persons and events all over the country: organized crime, plotting within the FBI, teenaged romance, and civil rights events and murder in the South. He brings up many of the lingering questions and odd trivia relating to the Kennedy tragedy and sets them in plausible, if admittedly fictional, scenarios.

Though a good proofreader is in order, the Kennedy connection becomes merely a hot opener. The book develops into a chase-murder mystery-thriller that spans continents and decades and that will keep you turning pages avidly.