Dear Subscriber,
I hope you’re having a great beginning to your week.
Speaking of mysterious crimes, Taxi Driver was the only film I’ve seen that the antihero goes from a psycho and would-be assassin to a hero and guy who can shit on the woman who shit on him. Very cool. Love Scorsese’s work. He was even in this film as a husband who wants to kill his wife for sleeping with an “n-word” guy, which you can’t say in today’s films if you’re white.
Jodie Foster got stalked by John Hinckley because of this film. Because Hinckley was the son of some very wealthy Republicans, and President Reagan survived the assassination, Hinckley became the only presidential assassin to ever win an insane plea verdict and was ultimately released from St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in Washington, D.C. after 35 years there.
I love these kinds of historical stories upon which to create vivid and realistic dramas and crime novels. My own voyage into assassination attempts is Sins of Darkness. It’s research based on the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, the former Attorney General of the United States, back when Attorney Generals actually did some high profile prosecutions of members of the Mafia. Today, it seems, we have former presidents who were indicted for 91 felonies and impeached twice, running for office again. How times change. The research on this novel was so “spot on” that I contributed to the Sirhan attorneys getting their client paroled recently. They called me to find out where I got my research about Sirhan being a programmed assassin. Sad to say, the present Governor of California, Gaven Newsom, wouldn’t permit Sirhan’s parole. Also, unlike guys like Hinckley, Sirhan’s parents didn’t live next-door to the George H. W. Bush Family in Texas, so he received no insanity release. Sirhan was just a poor Christian Palestinian. So, he’s still cooling his heels in the formal seclusion of San Quentin.
The other very graphically descriptive novel based on true crime is Russian Wollves. Seriously, I’ve had to argue First Amendment Rights to get passages of this novel promoted in magazines. I’ve had folks walk out while I read some of its contents in bookstores because of the horrendous nature of the crimes Andrei Chikatilo committed. I wrote a blog about how he compares as a serial killer to Jeff Dahmer of the United States. Frankly, Chikatilo is a milquetoast compared to Vladamir Putin and the crimes he’s committed lately, but I won’t get into that. If you want an adult read that will keep you turning the pages for Halloween, then you might buy this novel.
Enjoy the run-up to Halloween, folks, and keep that First Amendment free for us authors.
James Musgrave
San Diego, CA
