The Last Words of Jack Ruby

Late 1966. A sharp young FBI agent finds himself summoned to J. Edgar Hoover's office for an extremely important and highly confidential assignment: to fly to Dallas and interview a dying man who might just know the secrets behind one of the greatest crimes in American history. A dying man who’s also a murderer-indeed, whose own guilt was never in doubt, because his crime was committed in front of journalists and policemen, broadcast on live TV, and plastered on the front page of newspapers across the globe. A dying man, and an infamous one: Jack Ruby.

But Special Agent Bergman soon finds himself enmeshed in intrigue and suspicion, mayhem and paranoia. The turbulent decade that started careening into chaos three years before in Dealey Plaza has now crashed; the pillars of society are crumbling. An ex-partner just happens to be in town, drowning in drink and regret, possibly keeping an eye on Bergman but maybe simply nursing himself through a shady assignment called COINTELPRO. There's a beautiful and elusive woman who once danced for Jack Ruby, and who may know more about his dark, paranoid world than she lets on. Meanwhile a prosecutor in nearby New Orleans is embarking on a quixotic crusade to upend everything the Bureau thinks it knows about that November weekend in 1963. To top it all off, his hospitalized interviewee is drugged and dazed, sometimes lucid and sometimes muddled by morphine; he’s babbling about Judaism and history, about the Holocaust and Al Capone. And he’s also obsessed with a world-champion Jewish boxer and decorated World War II hero who also just happens to be a loyal lifelong friend: one who grew up running gangster errands with Ruby on the cacophonous streets of Chicago, one who might be a distraction for Bergman and might also be the key to everything—a man named Barney Ross.

Joshua Corey has carved out a niche for himself in the world of literary fiction. Now he stakes his claim to a larger territory, clearing a place for himself on the JFK-assassination bookshelf alongside novels like Don DeLillo’s Libra and Stephen King’s 11/22/63, while also providing insights about Jewish identity worthy of The Netanyahus, and honoring the hard-boiled heritage of James Ellroy. It’s a pulse-pounding crime caper and a cerebrum-stimulating work of art; once you’re done with it, it will not be done with you.