Princeton author pens thriller about JFK assassination
By Anthony Stoeckert, PacketMedia Group
R.G. Belsky says he isn’t a Kennedy assassination conspiracy buff, but he also doesn’t believe the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in murdering John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
When deciding to write about the assassination, Mr. Belsky, a veteran newsman with an impressive resume, decided the best way to do it was through fiction. And that led to the publication of his first novel, “The Kennedy Connection” (Atria Books, 2014), about a New York City newspaper reporter who seeks redemption through what could be the news story of the century — uncovering the truth of what happened on Nov. 22, 1963..
“I think there are a lot of unanswered questions and these questions are never going to be able to be answered in non-fiction because it’s 51 years later,” says Mr. Belsky who splits his time between Princeton and New York. “So I thought, I’ll write a novel about it.”
The book introduces the character Gil Malloy, a successful reporter whose reputation has suffered because of a scandal. In writing a piece about prostitution in New York, a story that got him a Pulitzer nomination, Malloy quoted a famed prostitute named Houston as if he interviewed her. But he never met her, what he knew about Houston he learned from other sources.
“He stepped over that line that you shouldn’t but he wanted so badly to have a big story,” Mr. Belsky said of his character. “He’s damaged goods when the story starts and then he stumbles onto this Kennedy story and he has to get people to believe him.”
That Kennedy story involves a secret son of Lee Harvey Oswald. This son, a creation of Mr. Belsky’s imagination, claims to have proof of his father’s innocence. Gil also learns that a series of murders taking place in New York may have ties to the assassination.
Mr. Belsky says fiction allowed him to take some facts of the assassination, and also come up with his own solution, which obviously cannot be done in journalism. He also wanted to write about journalism and the media. His journalism career primarily involved newspapers — running newsrooms at the “New York Post” and New York “Daily News.” He also worked for magazines and for NBC News, working on websites for local markets.
“I wanted to write what a newsroom is like on a big story in a big market, not the sanitized version you often get in a lot of books and movies and TV shows where everybody is noble and trying to do the right thing,” Mr. Belsky said. “People are noble and are trying to do the right thing, but there’s also the intensity and the energy and the fear and the mistakes people make.”
Mr. Belsky wanted “The Kennedy Connection” to be a warts-and-all kind of story. He thinks Gil is a good guy, even though he did something unethical. Gil tried to track down Houston but couldn’t, and he’s confident that what he printed was true, but he didn’t talk to someone he said he did. In reporting his Kennedy story, one of his Gil’s challenges is to convince people he’s on the up-and-up.
“When he gets this information and the secret son of Lee Harvey Oswald, the first reaction people have to him of course is, ‘You’re the guy who made up the story about the hooker. What’s this all about? What’s next? Are you going to tell us Jim Morrison is alive or you saw Elvis at a shopping mall?’” Mr. Belsky said. “It’s baggage for him but I wanted to make him basically a good, moral guy who made a mistake and is trying to come back from it.”
The mystery Gil unravels is fiction, the work of Mr. Belsky’s imagination, but Mr. Belsky said there’s also a lot of truth in his tale.
“That’s the balance you have to walk with,” Mr. Belsky says. “It’s based on the real-life facts. There is no secret son of Lee Harvey Oswald, that is made up. But a lot of the details of what happened (in the novel) are facts.”
For example, he says that in the book, Gil goes to New Orleans because that’s where Oswald was before he went to Dallas, and there are theories about him talking with the mob in New Orleans before going to Dallas.
“Gil pursues all these things, which are based in fact, but it’s fiction so it goes in different directions,” Mr. Belsky said. That’s the balance you have to work.”
Some of Gil’s experiences reflect those of the author. Mr. Belsky says he saw many images of Dealey Plaza after the assassination, most prominently in the footage in the Zapruda film of the assassination. But visiting there was powerful in a way watching pictures can’t be.
“My character talks about it in the book when he goes to Dealey plaza but it’s kind of my feelings about it,” Mr. Belsky said. “You always heard about it, then you stand in the sixth-floor window (of the Texas School Book Depository, where the Warren Commission determined Oswald fired his shots) and look down where Oswald supposedly fired the shot. And you walk onto the grassy knoll, which you’ve heard about with the second gunman, and you realize the grassy knoll is this tiny piece of grass. It’s all very powerful when you see it in person and my character in the book goes through a lot of this. and some of those are my feelings.”
If you read the book and like it, you’ll be happy to know there are more Gil Malloy stories in the works. Mr. Belsky plans on releasing a novella “The Midnight Hour” as an e-book in February. A second novel, “Shooting for the Stars” is slated for an August release, and Mr. Belsky says he hopes there’ll be more Gil Malloy stories after that.
A year ago, JFK was all over the news because 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination. Mr. Belsky wanted the “The Kennedy Assassination” to be released to coincide with that milestone, but it didn’t work out that way. But he says it’s a story that is always relevant.
“To me the assassination of John F. Kennedy is the ultimate cold case,” he says. “To me, it is the greatest unsolved murder of our time.”