Jeffery Deaver – The Final Twist – Comment.

 

Came across this little gem while travelling across town on a suburban bus, situated on an obscure table at the back of an old post office. The price was in my budget, ($5.00) so purchased the novel and put it down only once in a 24-hour period. Reading this Deaver thriller was certainly worth the time and certainly underpriced for the experience.  

Probably known to most who read this genre, Deaver is better known for his detective Lincoln Rhyme thrillers, which include the well-known The Bone Collector, later made into a feature film starring the charismatic Densel Washington. Personally, I found the novel better than the film but of course there is no accountability for taste.  

There was no doubt that I would like this novel when opening it up for the first time and reading the epigraph: 

For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit. 

        - Noam Chomsky 

The Final Twist is about one man’s battle against the powerful American Corporation: revealing their underhanded dealings at the possible expense of one’s own life.  

As a died in the wool anti-authoritarian individual, one could say this novel was written entirely for me. The David and Goliath theme in literature and film is used a lot, however, a billion-dollar company finding a loophole in the United States Constitution to run the country and fighting to prevent such a thing makes for some exciting reading.  

Our protagonist is Colter Shaw. He is a survivalist/private detective/solider/seeker of rewards. Shaw’s clients can be the wealthy seeking for lost chattels to the underprivileged looking for a missing spouse or family member. His reward can be huge or meagre depending on the job. In The Final Twist, Shaw is taking up the mission that his dead father began, and that is finding a thing, document or recording that will take this evil corporation down. As readers, we do not find out what this is until much later in the tale.  

Deaver is in the top five crime/thriller writers in the US. These include Lee Child, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Harlon Coben. All these writers are masters of the ‘twist’ including Jeffery Deaver. In The Final Twist, in every short chapter, the reader believes the action is going one way, when it goes in an unexpected direction at the end.  

This is clever and very entertaining. 

The Final Twist is a near perfect novel to read on a long flight across land and sea. Before you know it, looking up, you will have arrived at your destination.  

Tom O'Neill - Chaos – Comment

 

O’Neill set off on a twenty-year investigation into the Manson murders some thirteen years after the event. At first his assignment was to put a fresh perspective on the bloody slaughter. The further the investigation continued - the more questions seemed to manifest into view. Seeking the answers to these questions became a full- blown obsession for O'Neill. What he discovered is mind blowing and involves the Alphabet agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.) including high level prosecutors (DA’s) down to local police departments. The rabbit holes he plunges into are worth the ride, revealing the terrible machinations of the US government and their puppets.  

On August 9, 1969, a small group of Manson acolytes, entered the home of well-known director and currently pedophile on-the-run, Roman Polanski, murdering his beautiful 8-month pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and 4 other people. These murders were brutal. After the initial shock of the killings and revelations of the specific evil it revealed, novelist and journalist, Joan Didion proclaimed that this event was a cultural turning point, the end of the sixties. Suddenly free love, Rock and Roll, and anti-war activists, (former FBI director and infamous cross dresser, Edgar Hoover, called “peace mongers”) and most political movements of the Left were now dead.  

Interestingly, O’Neill, through his investigations, believed the Tate massacre, could well be connected to nefarious actors in the security state and powerful government politicians, to stop “leftist” protests, and anti-establishment movements across the country. Of course, on face value this sounds absurd. Pushing down the rabbit hole, however, O’Neill discovered CIA project MKULTRA, experiments with LSD to control the minds of individuals and hopefully the population. This project is now well known. Though it was called a “conspiracy theory” early on. Could there possibly be a connection with the CIA, Charles Manson, MKULTRA and the Tate murders?  

This is not the space to do a point-by-point summery of O’Neill’s discoveries. Most of these discoveries are incredibly compelling. Although the following quote from his book is warranted: 

I kept little pieces of carboard around my office. Sometimes I folded them up and carried them in my pocket. Whenever I started to doubt myself, which was a lot, I had a list of bullet points I’d write down on them and read to myself as encouragement...what I knew I had to share with the world. Like: Stephen Kay telling me that my findings were important enough to overturn (Manson) verdicts. Lewis Watnick, the retired DA, saying that Manson had to be an informant. Jolly West writing to his CIA handlers to announce that he implanted a false memory in someone; the CIA removing that information from the report they shared with Congress. The DA’s office conspiring with a judge to replace a defense attorney. Charles Guenther, fighting back tears to tell me about the wiretap he’d heard... (P. 426). 

After reading this incredible work of investigative journalism, I’m convinced that the US security agencies will go to any length to achieve their depraved ends. They will create mayhem, imprison the truthtellers, murder the innocent, and start international wars for their own insane goals.  

O’Neill’s Chaos does not reveal the proverbial “smoking gun” for the Tate murders nor the Kennedy assassinations. What the investigation does reveal is those in power and their puppets have a lot to hide, because their actions are criminal and ultimately, anti-human.  

Well worth the read.