Sixty-Three Closure

by Anthony Frewin

Soon after the apparent suicide of a close friend, Christopher Cornwell receives several photos the friend mailed before his death. Lee Harvey Oswald is in one of the pictures—but how could Oswald be photographed in a small English village when he was supposed to be living in Russia as a defector at the same time? The mystery deepens as Cornwell becomes the target of a shadowy agency as determined to keep its secrets now as it was in 1963.

Genres: Fiction

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a cheeky British take (think Kingsley Amis, perhaps) on conspiracy paranoia involving the Kennedy assasination. Even the Brits were involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, it seems. That paranoia and imminent death and the Kennedy tragedies can be linked with middle class British stoners is -- unexpetedly hilarious.

[Sara Tilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird to think that 1993 (when it is set) is equidistant between 1963 (when Kennedy was assassinated) and 2023 (now).
Immersive tale that creeps along at a snail’s pace but creates a thoroughly convincing world. Unlike the protagonist, we know it’s going to end badly but it’s fascinating finding out how far his investigation gets.
Amazing narrator. It would have been a much lesser book without him.

* Highly recommended Audible freebie *

[rosie · Rating 1 out of 5]

My dad gave me this book to read a year or so back. I wasn’t convinced that I’d be that interested in the plot, but as soon as I started reading I realised why he had given it to me. The book is set majority within my home town. Every few lines the protagonist is talking about a specific address he must visit, a road he needs to drive down, a random fact about a building that used to be a factory is is now a B&Q (it’s actually now a B&M). The main plot of this book is about the protagonists friend having supposedly killed himself and how this is connected to JFK, however, the author absolutely wanted to just talk about the small market town he knows so well. This book is only interesting to somebody who actually knows the places that are constantly referenced. I can’t imagine how annoying it is to read a book with random road names thrown in all the time. I even found it boring, and I actually know the places the author is talking about. The story itself is pretty ridiculous and dull - there’s a man who wears a cape, casually. There are also a lot of tropes (bachelor lifestyle, drinking constantly, the lady friend who becomes a love interest and loses all sense of personality apart from being sexualised). It’s also very dated, written in the mid 90s I believe. The ending is also really unsatisfying and annoying. Not worth it, but easy enough to read if you are that interested.

[Paul Dawes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my god was this a terrible book!!! Please, do yourself a favor and watch the grass grow or something else. I’m so angry with myself test I read it to the end, admittedly skipping most of the booooooring repetitive pointless bits. What a cop-out ending. Pointless.

[Brandon Gryder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for a good JFK assassination story. File this one as one of the better of those conspiracy novels that I have read. It takes over a third a of the book to get going, but the payoff is worth the wait.

[Willy Boy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining if far-fetched JFK assassination paranoia romp.

[Ant Koplowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn’t really a ‘fan’ of the whole JFK-conspiracy-theory-stuff when I came across this book, but that didn’t matter, as it’s a great read. As a thriller, it works really well – believable characters, well thought- through and gripping plot (an over-used phrase, but I genuinely couldn’t put it down), and a locale that one wouldn’t associate with a conspiracy thriller (Hertfordshire, UK), but is totally real. I am not sure if this provides ‘closure’ on the JFK story, but go along for the ride and don’t be too analytical, as it’s a great story from an under-rated and under-known author.
© Koplowitz 2005

[Gram · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite containing a weak tale about Lee Harvey Oswald, this book reads more like a travelogue of Hitchin (a small town in Hertfordshire, England) where most of the action takes place and there's also a lot of 1960's nostalgia - presumably based on the author's own youthful, rebellious experiences. Parts of the book are interesting, including those related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, but, overall, this story reads like a good chance missed.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I`m surprised this is rated so highly, here and elsewhere.
While the premise is very interesting, and a nice head of steam builds up towards the end, the middle third is basically full of `our hero` drinking like a fish and name checking places in Hitchin like he`s being paid to do so.
If the fluff was edited out it would`ve been much better.
Brian.

[Tony Moult · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent twist an the Kennedy Conspiracy theories, Frewin (who also wrote London Blues) is adapt at hooking the reader with both his main characters and the situations they find themselves in. A myriad collection of pseudo underworld

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get Carter meets The Parallax View, but the ending depends on the protagonist being painfully naive about how powerful conspiracies work, and as someone working in the film industry surely a familiarity with 70s conspiracy films would have armed him against that.