Combining fictional characters with historical characters, particularly in the context of a well-known event about which many people already have opinions, is a tricky business. On the whole, Lew Paper does well with that and fashions from it a readable and intriguing novel well worth your time.

Two quibbles. First, the ending was downright lame, so much so that the last major chunk of the novel consists of nothing but people sitting around and explaining to each other, and the reader, exactly what has just happened. Second, while the author's reverence for detail was impressive, sometimes he allowed that reverence to overwhelm the narrative. For example, just because a character goes to dinner at the Palm, it isn't necessary to include the entire history of the Palm restaurants, right down to the names of the men who started the first one.

One more thing. The ARC that was provided by the publisher was a mess. Huge chunks of the text were run together without spacing between words, which made much of the reading awkward, annoying, and unpleasant. The author spun out a good enough narrative to make it worthwhile to stick with it and suffer through decoding the mangled text, but the publisher should be ashamed to send something this badly formatted out to reviewers. In a time when any home hobby writer can produce perfect text with readily available, inexpensive software, it is inexcusable for a company claiming to be a professional publisher to circulate something this sloppy. Authors deserve far more respectful treatment than that.

This was a wonderfully done what if concept, it had that feel that I was looking for and enjoyed the overall concept of this. It worked with the Jimmy Hoffa element and had that tense atmosphere that I was hoping for and enjoyed getting in this story. The characters worked well overall in this story and were written well in this time-line. Lew Paper wrote this perfectly and had me on the edge of my seat.