Rating: 
Summary: Found the writing too stilted to make this a good read...
Review: Mr. Mallon seems starstruck with his proximity to "celebrity", asking no hard questions and demanding no hard answers from Ruth Paine. I suspect an articulation of any other intent to her would have nixed any opportunity for access at all.
Ruth Paine is presented as a sweet, unassuming, innocent bystander fortuitously thrust into close proximity to Lee and Marina Oswald allowing her an unexpected opportunity to improve her Russian language skills.
Add this book to Posner's "Case Closed" and a perfect sacharin sweet coating completes the placibo of "lazy thinking" to what could have been a serious opportunity to add salient, pertinant historic information to a very important debate.
Throughout the book I hear myself screaming, "Ask the question, Ask the question !!"
Rating: 
Summary: Move over Posner -- You've got major competition
Review: This book is a waste of good paper. Falsehoods, innuendo, lies, ommissions -- everything Posner gave you, Mallon recycled. It is apparent he's almost totally unfamiliar with the Kennedy murder. This book doesn't belong on anyone's bookshelf. I'd rate this at about minus-5 stars but that wasn't one of the choices.
Rating:
Summary: VERY Creative Nonfiction
Review: This book is an example of creative nonfiction as it is written like a novel. The operative word here is "creative". This book is written as the title suggests from Ruth Paine's point of view. Both the author and interview subject have placed much more importance on her relationship with the Oswalds than was really there. Ruth seems to think that she was an integral part of what happened as if she could have stopped Lee. The truth is she had only met them at a party in early 1963 and even though Marina was living with her; Ruth barely knew the couple. Mallon makes a lot of assumptions in this book like stating that Oswald went back to the boarding house to pick up the pistol "he used minutes later to kill the patrolman, J. D. Tippet who stopped him near the corner of Tenth and Patton." The gun Oswald had on him at the time of his arrest at the Texas Theater had a defective firing pin so he couldn't have shot anyone with it. Witnesses were goaded into identifying Oswald during the police line-up. I might remind readers that it has never been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lee killed Kennedy or Officer Tippet. I must admit that Ruth's obsession with Marina before and after the assassination was VERY INTERESTING and the only part of the book that seemed based on reality. If you like historical comedy, this is the book for you!
Rating:
Summary: VERY Creative Nonfiction
Review: This book is an example of creative nonfiction as it is written like a novel. The operative word here is "creative". This book is written as the title suggests from Ruth Paine's point of view. Both the author and interview subject have placed much more importance on her relationship with the Oswalds than was really there. Ruth seems to think that she was an integral part of what happened as if she could have stopped Lee. The truth is she had only met them at a party in early 1963 and even though Marina was living with her; Ruth barely knew the couple. Mallon makes a lot of assumptions in this book like stating that Oswald went back to the boarding house to pick up the pistol "he used minutes later to kill the patrolman, J. D. Tippet who stopped him near the corner of Tenth and Patton." The gun Oswald had on him at the time of his arrest at the Texas Theater had a defective firing pin so he couldn't have shot anyone with it. Witnesses were goaded into identifying Oswald during the police line-up. I might remind readers that it has never been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lee killed Kennedy or Officer Tippet. I must admit that Ruth's obsession with Marina before and after the assassination was VERY INTERESTING and the only part of the book that seemed based on reality. If you like historical comedy, this is the book for you!
Rating: 
Summary: Captivating Inquiry into Good and Evil
Review: This excellent inquiry into good and evil in an historical context could not be more timely in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. I just finished reading this absorbing book in a single sitting--it is both well-written and captivating enough that I hardly noticed the time passing. As an idealist, a humanitarian, and a Quaker, Ruth Paine was in a truly unique position to relate to Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald and their children in 1963. Driven by both a desire to avail herself of an opportunity to learn Russian and an empathy for Marina's plight as an emigre with an abusive husband, Ruth Paine welcomed this troubled couple into the bosom of her family, including her two young children. To say that her trust was betrayed by both Marina and Lee is an understatement. Marina knew about Lee's attempt to murder another public official before JFK and of his possession of a powerful rifle while living in the Paine household, but never revealed either to Paine. Paine went so far as to even find a job for Oswald--with fatal implications, in the Texas School Book Depository. Mallon presents the facts of what happened in the Paine home but also asks critical questions about what the rather naive but charitable Paines knew or should have known up to November 22, when Oswald left their home in the morning with an apparent plan to murder the President. Ruth Paine comes across as perhaps too trusting but also relatively pure of heart; asked about whether she harbors anger or resentment toward Oswald and about what she would ask him in an afterlife, she responds that she got over the anger soon after the event and would want to know "Where are you now in your learning, and your understanding of life?" Mallon has less empathy for Paine's ex-husband Michael, who apparently knew in advance that Oswald had the rifle that would be used to kill JFK and never revealed it until 1993--30 years after the assassination. It is hard to fathom how Michael, even as Ruth's estranged husband, would have so little regard for her safety or that of his children, who lived in the house with the Oswalds--much less the safety of society in general. Mallon speculates that Michael might have succumbed to a family tradition of strangeness--his forbears include Ralph Waldo Emerson and another man intensely interested in ESP and the paranormal. But the book never explains Michael's motives as it convincingly captures Ruth's. It is unfortunate that so many other reviews of this fine book get caught up in the never-ending disputes about whether there was a conspiracy to kill JFK or whether Oswald acted alone. Regardless of where the truth lies in these debates--and I for one believe that we will never completely know what really happened--this book warrants the consideration of thoughtful readers for its many positive attributes.
Rating: 
Summary: A Small Book, Not a Slight One
Review: Thomas Mallon has written about Ruth Paine, the woman who found she had harboured one of the most infamous criminals of all time- Lee Harvey Oswald. Whatever you believe about the Kennedy assassination, you'll appreciate Mallon's glimpse at what it was like to be standing right next to one of the most important, disruptive, and tragic events of the twentieth century. Ruth Paine is revealed to be a woman with a very sure sense of who she is and what she stands for, a woman who- almost alone among survivors truly close to the assassination- refuses to be defined by her proximity to what happened that day in Dealey Plaza. Mallon's skill at conveying a sense of what the world was like in 1963 is remarkable, and very welcome. In several paragraphs, he details just how un-sophisticated a planet we lived on then; it was a day of hand-typed copies instead of Xeroxes and the 8-cent stamp instead of e-mail. As someone who was around at that time, I've often wished that more authors dealing with this topic would take more care to remind readers that the world was a very different place then. Forgetting that has led many assassination researchers and theorists down many a specious and unproductive pathway. One example (which is not to be found in Mallon's work) is Michael Paine's ownership of a Minox camera. Today's researchers have made the most prodigious hay out of that, never suspecting the truth- the Minox was heavily promoted and sold in the early Sixties as a toy for the well-off (which Mr. Paine was, despite his unassuming lifestyle), advertised in 'National Geographic'. The camera- in the context of its time- was no more meaningful than possession of a laptop is today. Yes, both COULD be used for nefarious purposes, but most owners use their laptops for peaceful, private purposes, and so did most Minox buffs. Mallon's work is always scrupulous in remembering the difference between Now and Then, and it is most refreshing. Ruth Paine seems to have given much of herself to Mallon, and therefore to us. She is revealed to have been very pained at several questions and revelations that came up both before and during the interviews for the book, but she seems never to have cut off the author's lines of inquiry, nor even to have directed them, answering frankly. Touchingly, Mallon's research revealed things to Ruth Paine even she had not known about the central event of her life, and her reactions to them are interesting indeed. Mallon has not produced a perfect book- there does not seem to have been much direct questioning of Mrs. Paine on some of the topics that assassination researchers raise the most questions about (that Minox, for one), and so the book will give a great deal of unnecessary ammunition to those who feel that Mrs. Paine has something to hide, rather than clearing matters once and for all. And there are a few places where Mallon does not make clear that he's quoting from previously published material, giving rise to the impression that he interviewed people he did not. While a reader familiar with the subject will be able to discern immediately that, say, Robert Oswald did not grant Mallon an interview, the author waits a bit to let the average reader in on that. Still, it's a remarkable look at a remarkable witness to history, a woman who has had staggering events roll over her, and like the slender reed she resembles, has sprung back, ready for new life, ready to bend in new directions, respecting the force of the storm, but quietly, serenely confident in her ability to survive it.
Rating:
Summary: A Small Book, Not a Slight One
Review: Thomas Mallon has written about Ruth Paine, the woman who found she had harboured one of the most infamous criminals of all time- Lee Harvey Oswald. Whatever you believe about the Kennedy assassination, you'll appreciate Mallon's glimpse at what it was like to be standing right next to one of the most important, disruptive, and tragic events of the twentieth century. Ruth Paine is revealed to be a woman with a very sure sense of who she is and what she stands for, a woman who- almost alone among survivors truly close to the assassination- refuses to be defined by her proximity to what happened that day in Dealey Plaza. Mallon's skill at conveying a sense of what the world was like in 1963 is remarkable, and very welcome. In several paragraphs, he details just how un-sophisticated a planet we lived on then; it was a day of hand-typed copies instead of Xeroxes and the 8-cent stamp instead of e-mail. As someone who was around at that time, I've often wished that more authors dealing with this topic would take more care to remind readers that the world was a very different place then. Forgetting that has led many assassination researchers and theorists down many a specious and unproductive pathway. One example (which is not to be found in Mallon's work) is Michael Paine's ownership of a Minox camera. Today's researchers have made the most prodigious hay out of that, never suspecting the truth- the Minox was heavily promoted and sold in the early Sixties as a toy for the well-off (which Mr. Paine was, despite his unassuming lifestyle), advertised in 'National Geographic'. The camera- in the context of its time- was no more meaningful than possession of a laptop is today. Yes, both COULD be used for nefarious purposes, but most owners use their laptops for peaceful, private purposes, and so did most Minox buffs. Mallon's work is always scrupulous in remembering the difference between Now and Then, and it is most refreshing. Ruth Paine seems to have given much of herself to Mallon, and therefore to us. She is revealed to have been very pained at several questions and revelations that came up both before and during the interviews for the book, but she seems never to have cut off the author's lines of inquiry, nor even to have directed them, answering frankly. Touchingly, Mallon's research revealed things to Ruth Paine even she had not known about the central event of her life, and her reactions to them are interesting indeed. Mallon has not produced a perfect book- there does not seem to have been much direct questioning of Mrs. Paine on some of the topics that assassination researchers raise the most questions about (that Minox, for one), and so the book will give a great deal of unnecessary ammunition to those who feel that Mrs. Paine has something to hide, rather than clearing matters once and for all. And there are a few places where Mallon does not make clear that he's quoting from previously published material, giving rise to the impression that he interviewed people he did not. While a reader familiar with the subject will be able to discern immediately that, say, Robert Oswald did not grant Mallon an interview, the author waits a bit to let the average reader in on that. Still, it's a remarkable look at a remarkable witness to history, a woman who has had staggering events roll over her, and like the slender reed she resembles, has sprung back, ready for new life, ready to bend in new directions, respecting the force of the storm, but quietly, serenely confident in her ability to survive it.
Rating:
Summary: COMMON SENSE PREVAILS.
Review: Thomas Mallon's book successfully addresses the charges made against the Paines, including the ludicrous attempt to tie them in with the assassination.From beginning to end Mallon intermittantly exposes the charletans who have used this tragedy to promote their own agendas.This book is not for fantasists who continually accept the idea that everyone from LBJ to the Kennedy family were engaged in a vast conspiracy to initiate then cover up the crime of the century.The reader who wants to know the full and true facts about this tragedy can do no better than study this book along with Larry Sneed's "No More Silence" -books written by authors who use common sense and erudtion to explain why and how Kennedy was killed.
Rating:
Summary: PAINE-FUL RECOLLECTIONS OF JFK MURDER
Review: Thomas Mallon's most recent foray into "non-fiction," is not only a disappointment. It's a disgrace. The book's a bust not so much for what it is but for what it fails to be.
Mallon's subjects, Ruth and her ex-husband, Michael Paine, were the young couple who befriended Lee and Marina Oswald
in early 1963. When President John F. Kennedy's long-awaited visit to Dallas rolled around on Nov. 22, 1963, Marina was
living at Ruth's house in Irving, Texas. Lee Oswald, who would eventually be charged with the president's gunshot slaying,
spent the night before the assassination there at Ruth's home. When Dallas police appeared at the Irving address on that
fateful Friday afternoon, Marina told them Lee's rifle was in the garage. When they searched, the gun was missing. Mallon could've delved deeply into the Paines' background, revealing their family's relationship, for instance, to former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who became one of the primary investigators into the Kennedy assassination.
When the Paines each testified before the Warren Commission in 1964, Dulles oversaw their questioning. For many years, Michael's New England-based mother and stepfather, Ruth and Arthur Young, had been close friends of Mary Bancroft,Dulles' mistress dating back to his days as an undercover operative in Switzerland during World War II.
If the public had known in 1964 about the Paine family's ties to Dulles, the Warren Commission may have been exposed for the sham that it was, a tool of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hoover and Johnson both desperately wanted the JFK hit to dissolve swiftly into history, attributed to a "lone nut," Oswald, who in turn was assassinated by another "lone nut," Big D nightclub operator Jack Ruby.
Mallon is apparently among the shrinking number of Americans who swallow that unlikely scenario, the double-lone nut theory.
Instead of exploring the Paines' unholy alliance with Dulles in this book, Mallon wallows in Ruth's Quakerism and her worries over her lost friendship with Marina. Instead of examining Michael's classified work at Bell Helicopter or his father's interest in the assassination of Leon Trotsky, he describes the husband's fascination with cabinetry and contradancing. In doing so, Mallon effectively trivializes the JFK murder and expressly taunts conspiracy theorists who insist that the Paines deserve more serious probing. Mallon actually mocks longtime assassination researchers by comparing them to "Trekkies," the cult-like followers of a long-ago canceled TV science fiction show.
Having endeared himself to Ruth, courting her carefully over years via mail and telephone in order secure her
permission to interview her at length about the murder of the president, Mallon literally sold out.
The Westport, Conn. writer boasts a lengthy and impressive resume, having cranked out well-received novels such as "Dewey Defeats Truman." His years of experience fail him here, however, as he relies on his literary talents to dance around issues he should have more fully embraced.
Specifically, he simply labels such facts as the Dulles connection as mere "coincidence." In making this point, Mallon quotes two people: Ruth's mother, who blames "fate" for her daughter's unusual notoriety, and Norman Mailer, author of "Oswald's Ghost," a mid-90s biography of the alleged assassin.
In "Oswald's Ghost," Mallon neglects to inform readers of "Mrs. Paine's Garage," Mailer actually asserted that -- given the unlikelihood of the Warren Report's single-bullet theory -- a second gunman may well have stood, completely by chance, firing at JFK from behind the stockade fence on the grassy knoll in front of the presidential limousine while Oswald fired from behind, totally oblivious to the other shooter!
After reading illogical deductions such as that, you can see why writers such as Mailer and Mallon remain more highly
admired for their fiction than for their non-fiction.
To illustrate his insistence that coincidence ruled the Paines' fate, Mallon concludes his book by relating a story
about Mr. and Mrs., Raymond Entenmann, former Paine pals who happened to help stock JFK's Fort Worth Hotel room with
artwork on the night of Nov. 21-22, 1963.
The Entenmanns have nothing to do with the killing of the president, of course, but Mallon seems to be saying that
since the Paines knew the Entenmanns, it's also logical that they may have known Dulles as well or Dallas FBI agent James Hosty, or that we shouldn't be surprised that Ruth's father worked for a CIA-related development agency in South America or that Michael's father-in-law was an inventor for Bell Helicopter and his father, Lyman Paine, had been a prominent follower of Soviet expatriate Leon Trotsky.
Although they both gave lengthy testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964, neither of the Paines were called
before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 nor before the Assassination Records Review Board in the
mid-1990s. Now there's a coincidence that bears explaining, because both Ruth and Michael, now in their early 70s, still have
plenty to answer for. Tyhey sure didn;t tell Mallon anything expept what they WANT people to hear, and he was oh-so-agreeable to participate in that subtle subterfuge.
Rating:
Summary: PAINE-FUL RECOLLECTIONS OF JFK MURDER
Review: Thomas Mallon's most recent foray into "non-fiction," is not only a disappointment. It's a disgrace. The book's a bust not so much for what it is but for what it fails to be.
Mallon's subjects, Ruth and her ex-husband, Michael Paine, were the young couple who befriended Lee and Marina Oswald
in early 1963. When President John F. Kennedy's long-awaited visit to Dallas rolled around on Nov. 22, 1963, Marina was living at Ruth's house in Irving, Texas. Lee Oswald, who would eventually be charged with the president's gunshot slaying, spent the night before the assassination there at Ruth's home. When Dallas police appeared at the Irving address on that fateful Friday afternoon, Marina told them Lee's rifle was in the garage. When they searched, the gun was missing. Mallon could've delved deeply into the Paines' background, revealing their family's relationship, for instance, to former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who became one of the primary investigators into the Kennedy assassination. When the Paines each testified before the Warren Commission in 1964, Dulles oversaw their questioning. For many years, Michael's New England-based mother and stepfather, Ruth and Arthur Young, had been close friends of Mary Bancroft, Dulles' mistress dating back to his days as an undercover operative in Switzerland during World War II. If the public had known in 1964 about the Paine family's ties to Dulles, the Warren Commission may have been exposed for the sham that it was, a tool of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hoover and Johnson both desperately wanted the JFK hit to dissolve swiftly into history, attributed to a "lone nut," Oswald, who in turn was assassinated by another "lone nut," Big D nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Mallon is apparently among the shrinking number of Americans who swallow that unlikely scenario, the double-lone nut theory.
Instead of exploring the Paines' unholy alliance with Dulles in this book, Mallon wallows in Ruth's Quakerism and her worries over her lost friendship with Marina. Instead of examining Michael's classified work at Bell Helicopter or his father's interest in the assassination of Leon Trotsky, he describes the husband's fascination with cabinetry and contradancing. In doing so, Mallon effectively trivializes the JFK murder and expressly taunts conspiracy theorists who insist that the Paines deserve more serious probing. Mallon actually mocks longtime assassination researchers by comparing them to "Trekkies," the cult-like followers of a long-ago canceled TV science fiction show. Having endeared himself to Ruth, courting her carefully over years via mail and telephone in order secure her permission to interview her at length about the murder of the president, Mallon literally sold out. The Westport, Conn. writer boasts a lengthy and impressive resume, having cranked out well-received novels such as "Dewey Defeats Truman." His years of experience fail him here, however, as he relies on his literary talents to dance around issues he should have more fully embraced.
Specifically, he simply labels such facts as the Dulles connection as mere "coincidence." In making this point, Mallon quotes two people: Ruth's mother, who blames "fate" for her daughter's unusual notoriety, and Norman Mailer, author of "Oswald's Ghost," a mid-90s biography of the alleged assassin. In "Oswald's Ghost," Mallon neglects to inform readers of "Mrs. Paine's Garage," Mailer actually asserted that -- given the unlikelihood of the Warren Report's single-bullet theory -- a second gunman may well have stood, completely by chance, firing at JFK from behind the stockade fence on the grassy knoll in front of the presidential limousine while Oswald fired from behind, totally oblivious to the other shooter! After reading illogical deductions such as that, you can see why writers such as Mailer and Mallon remain more highly admired for their fiction than for their non-fiction.
To illustrate his insistence that coincidence ruled the Paines' fate, Mallon concludes his book by relating a story about Mr. and Mrs., Raymond Entenmann, former Paine pals who happened to help stock JFK's Fort Worth Hotel room with artwork on the night of Nov. 21-22, 1963. The Entenmanns have nothing to do with the killing of the president, of course, but Mallon seems to be saying that since the Paines knew the Entenmanns, it's also logical that they may have known Dulles as well or Dallas FBI agent James Hosty, or that we shouldn't be surprised that Ruth's father worked for a CIA-related development agency in South America or that Michael's father-in-law was an inventor for Bell Helicopter and his father, Lyman Paine, had been a prominent follower of Soviet expatriate Leon Trotsky.
Although they both gave lengthy testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964, neither of the Paines were called before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 nor before the Assassination Records Review Board in the mid-1990s.
Now THERE's a coincidence that bears explaining, because both Ruth and Michael, now in their early-70s, still have plenty to answer for. They sure didn't tell Mallon anything other than what they WANT people to hear, and he was oh-so-agreeable to participate in that subtle subterfuge.
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