A disgraced Secret Service agent and a Jesuit priest set out to solve the JFK assassination in Dead Ringer the author’s paranoid new thriller.

What prompted you to write a novel about the JFK assassination?

The assassination was an inflection point in U.S. history. What happened in Dallas was a singular event that scrambled the nation’s psyche. That’s raw material I find impossible to ignore when prowling for story elements and thematic backdrops for my fiction.

It’s estimated that 40,000 books have been written about JFK. How did you organize your research in the face of such numbers?

By choosing not to read 39,994 of those books. Of the nonfiction works I consulted, James W. Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable proved most influential in shaping Dead Ringer. The book not only presented a theoretical line of reasoning that resonated with me but also provided a dramatic framework through which I could craft my own engaging work of fiction.

You have a history as a screenwriter and filmmaker, as well as a novelist. How does the screenwriting influence the novel
writing?

Decision makers in Hollywood hate to read so much that they used to pay would-be screenwriters to read material for them. Now, AI does that grunt work. Because of that avoidance of the written word, a successful screenwriter must learn to grab their reader by the short hairs with every single beat. With my books, I endeavor to write by the same edict: make every word count. Also, this may not be a news flash to your readers, but “collaboration” in Hollywood means paying a writer a nice chunk of money to shut up and do as they’re told. Transitioning to book writing was sheer liberation.

The novel culminates with a game-changing twist. Did you start there and work backwards, or did it arise in the writing?

It came first. The genesis of the book was to come up with the one answer to who killed JFK that I’d never heard before, and then write a book that convincingly explained that resolution.

Recently, five million pages of records related to the assassination have been released to the public. Any interest in
dipping into that new material?

I haven’t read it all, but my understanding is that almost the entirety of the new material was devoid of bombshells. Wouldn’t we have heard of one by now? The truth will never be known, which is why it was so much fun to invent my own ideas about it. Anyway, my film agent has just started the process of sending this book out to producers and filmmakers. I’m dying to write the hell out of a screenplay adaptation.