Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and the Garrison Investigation

Though it did leave me feeling as though more detailscould have been provided.I enjoy this author very much.

Great research.

Kerry Thornley was a fringe figure most of his life, highly intelligent and non-comformist, Thornley set out to be a writer and after serving in the Marines for a season, headed down to New Orleans in order to add some local color to his writing. While Thornley served in the marines he met and befriended, as much as anybody could, Lee Harvey Oswald.Oswald and peacetime service inspired Thornley to write a novel called The Idle Warriors, basing the main character on Oswald.That, along with living in New Orleans, along with his irreverent view on Kennedy caused Thornley to be sucked up into the whirlwind of the Garrison investigation.This is that story.As improbable as it may seem to someone who didn't live through this terrible era of American history, Adam Gorightly backs up the story with facsimiles of documents and newspaper clippings and some rare writings of Kerry Thornley himself.

I won a copy of this book from Goodreads FirstReads program.Maybe this is entirely my problem, but this book was not at all as expected and found it difficult to read. My expectation based on the description and the author bio was that this book was the story of a little known side character in the JFK assassination. That is to say a historical look at one player in the craziness that was the Garrison investigation. The typeface is that of typewriting and as the cover shows blacked out lines to indicate redaction. I thought this was a means to show how Garrison believed in a CIA coverup. I however was wrong. Instead, this book is itself one big conspiracy theory. There are endnotes, but nowhere near even half of the "evidence" is included. I still have no idea what the central theory behind this book even was.Even if you dig reading conspiracy theories, this book lacks organization. There is some level of chronology guiding it but people appear at will with little explanation and no central argument underlies presentation of "evidence".I really have no idea what this books intends itself to be, but I find it to be ramblings and musings of various conspiracy theories without itself becoming a convincing theory of its own.

Since Adam Gorightly wrote ‘The Prankster and the Conspiracy’ he has amassed more information on the Garrison investigation and Kerry Thornley’s role in it, enabling him to burrow deeper down the rabbit hole of the JFK assassination and bring us ‘Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Lee Oswald and the Garrison Investigation’.Inevitably there is a little crossover with the earlier book, but ‘Caught in the Crossfire’ has a narrower focus than the broad biographical sweep of ‘The Prankster and the Conspiracy’ and is more up-to-date on Kerry’s links to the JFK assassination and Jim Garrison’s investigation into the conspiracy. As such, this is essential reading for JFK conspiracy buffs and Discordian Popes alike and is highly recommended!