What an extremely detailed and well-written account of a very sad time in American history. I very much agree with Mr. Sides, that Dr. Martin Luther King could have done far more to better the world if he was able to live out his natural life. As flawed as he was in his personal life (aren't all humans at least a little flawed), he had the vision of a better world without violence and hatred. We need more human beings like him!
Quite good history of the search for James Earl Ray. The author claims he used the techniques of a novelist without his license, as described by Shelby Foote. In a discussion of the FBI's decision to concentrate on reviewing fingerprints from convicts instead of their larger file, the author says that this reduced their work by "several orders of magnitude", but the reduction was from 53,000 to 1,900, clearly a reduction of a single order of magnitude.
Spotted in a US airport bookstore, and bought on the Kindle thanks to the barcode-remembering magic of Google Goggles. This is a wonderful, wonderful book. Really fascinating.
I ought to preface this by saying that I had no idea of the story of either Martin Luther King or his killer. I didn't know the killer's history, whether he was captured, or whether he lived to tell the tale. This is probably quite bad - but then, I wasn't born when this happened, but it was recent enough (and remote enough) not to be taught in English schools in the 1980s. Therefore, this was, to me, rather an exciting thriller - on the same lines as the Day of the Jackal, perhaps.
This book's made all the more interesting because it's not a fictional account - every single piece in the book is rooted in fact: and each source meticulously footnoted …
Spotted in a US airport bookstore, and bought on the Kindle thanks to the barcode-remembering magic of Google Goggles. This is a wonderful, wonderful book. Really fascinating.
I ought to preface this by saying that I had no idea of the story of either Martin Luther King or his killer. I didn't know the killer's history, whether he was captured, or whether he lived to tell the tale. This is probably quite bad - but then, I wasn't born when this happened, but it was recent enough (and remote enough) not to be taught in English schools in the 1980s. Therefore, this was, to me, rather an exciting thriller - on the same lines as the Day of the Jackal, perhaps.
This book's made all the more interesting because it's not a fictional account - every single piece in the book is rooted in fact: and each source meticulously footnoted (in a sympathetic way on the Kindle, incidentally). Every word spoken, every small detail, all comes from research.
I found the book fascinating, and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who either wants to understand recent US history - and the riots that consumed the US in the 1960s (as I read it, riots were consuming London, too) - or anyone that just wants a damn good thriller. This does both, perfectly. Brilliant - heartily recommended.
