Trained to Kill by Antonio Veciana and Carlos Harrison

With the release of the latest cache of until-now-confidential documents on the JFK assassination, I thought it time I get some reading in. Along came on NetGalley, one of the review services I use, this title. Trained to Kill is sub-headed “The Inside Story of CIA plots against Castro, Kennedy and Che” and is the autobiography of Antonio Veciana, a Cuban exile who spent the past fifty years or so plotting the overthrow of Fidel Castro.

Veciana details how he was recruited by a CIA officer known to him as Maurice Bishop (this officer’s cover name was to prove important) to usurp Castro, the CIA having correctly identified Vecianna’s growing disillusionment with the then nascent revolutionary regime. At first Veciana was tasked with psychological warfare – the spreading of rumours to sow discord and undermine the economy – something he embraced with gusto and not a little success. But by his own description, he was keen for more and it wasn’t long before he was leading his first assassination attempt. After the Bay of Pigs debacle (something he wasn’t involved in) Veciana fled with his family to Florida. Here he met up with Bishop and he says the CIA man was incandescent with what he saw as Kennedy’s betrayal of the Cuban exile invaders.

Veciana now founded Alpha 66, a militant group. While he says that the organisation’s exploits were exaggerated – again this was psychological warfare, this time more towards the Kennedy Administration, the hope being they would be forced to act against Castro – he does not deny that the group did launch attacks and raids against Cuba and against foreign shipping supplying the island. Veciana is keen to downplay civilian casualties here and perhaps Alpha 66 did take pains to avoid innocent casualties, but it’s hard not to conclude that the organisation was engaged in terrorism.

Throughout this time, Veciana was still in contact with the CIA via Bishop and it was at one such meeting that he met Lee. A little while later, JFK was assassinated and Veciana claims he recognised the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the Lee his CIA contact had been meeting with. Does this mean that the CIA, via Bishop, had something to do with the assassination of JFK? Perhaps, perhaps not. Years later, Vecianna was asked about this by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (a House of Representatives Committee formed to look again at the JFK assassination due to concerns over the original Warren Commission’s findings). In particular, he was asked whether Bishop was in fact the known CIA officer (who rose to be the CIA Chief of Operations in the Western Hemisphere) David Atlee Phillips. Veciana said no and claimed not to recognise Phillips. Fast forward to 2014 and he changed his mind, claiming Philips was indeed the man he knew as Bishop, something he repeats in Trained to Kill. Does this volte-face undermine Veciana’s credibility? Certainly, there could be compelling reasons for him not to have told the truth originally, not least fear of the consequences. If he is right and Bishop was Philips, and he witnessed him meeting with Oswald just weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, he might have reasonably feared for his safety. In the end, it is for the reader to decide.

For my own part, I tend towards the view that Oswald was a lone assassin. If so, Veciana might still have witnessed his CIA contact meeting with Oswald (and consequently concluded the CIA to have been involved). One explanation for the CIA’s latter behaviour, which certainly gave the impression of cover up, is that Oswald was indeed in contact with the CIA and then when he assassinated Kennedy, the agency panicked. Realising people might assume they had set the assassination up, the CIA by this theory have spent the past fifty years desperately trying to suppress the evidence of their negligence, the fact that had they been on the ball they might have spotted Oswald’s plans and put a stop to them.

Whatever the case, this book’s revelations concerning the Kennedy assassination threaten to overshadow its real explosive power. For that we need to look again at Castro. Trained to Kill demonstrates that Castro’s regime was never really given a chance. Veciana and others like him were recruited almost as soon as Castro came to power. I don’t doubt that Castro is not a particularly likeable chap, but the obsessive and pernicious attempts to overthrow him hardened the regime. Hardliners came to the fore and more moderate members of the revolutionary administration were side-lined. In the end, Castro was pushed into the welcoming arms of the Soviets. All this has long been known of course, but what was new to this reader certainly was the level of terroristic violence Alpha 66 and other likeminded groups were willing to resort to. In other circumstances, these people would have been arrested by the FBI, tried and convicted. It’s difficult to see how the tactics employed by these groups were any different to, say, those of the IRA or ETA.

Trained to Kill is one man’s honest account – sometimes shockingly so – of his work for the CIA in the attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. It is a fascinating historical document and well worth a read.

4 out of 5 stars

A Summer Revenge by Tom Callaghan

This is the third novel in the author’s series featuring Akyl Borubaev of the Bishkek Murder Squad. While the previous two novels have been set squarely in Akyl’s home country of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek is the capital) this third outing pulls him from his comfort zone. Not only is Akyl now firmly ex-police (after events that transpired in the previous book) but his old protector/nemesis, the powerful Minister of State Security, has very much made him an offer he cannot refuse. The Minister’s mistress, Natasha Sulonbekova, has disappeared, apparently run off, and Akyl must travel to Dubai to find her. Succeed and he stands to get his old job back. Refuse, or fail, and he’s likely to find himself in an early grave.

From the outset, Akyl guesses that there’s more to the Minister’s tale than a case of a foolish older man falling for a younger woman only to be embarrassed when she runs away. He wonders whether she’s stolen money from him, but thinks that even this might be not the whole truth. His task is further complicated by the fact that in Dubai he will be operating alone, with none of the official jurisdictional authority that he’s used to. Should he be arrested by the authorities or fall foul of criminal actors, then no one will come to the rescue.

A Summer Revenge is an atmospheric novel and the author clearly either knows Dubai well or has done his research. This isn’t the Dubai of the superrich and glossy holiday brochures, rather it is a seedy underbelly full of dingy strip clubs and populated by prostitutes, gangsters and hustlers. As with the previous two volumes in the series Akyl proves to be a likeable protagonist while the other characters are all well drawn. The exception remains Saltanat Umaroza, a femme fatale Uzbek assassin, a recurring character who I still find a little too clichéd for my liking.

As with the previous two novels, the plot of A Summer Revenge is multifaceted.  Akyl’s suspicions that the Minister’s concerns for his mistress’s whereabouts stretch to more than that of a lover spurned, or mere financials, are borne out. The tale that unfolds involves corruption, greed and Chechen terrorism. The author does a neat job of juggling the various plates he spins and tying up all the various loose ends. That all said, I enjoyed this outing of Akyl’s a little less than his previous adventures. This might be that the peril never seems particularly high. Yes, if Akyl fails, the Minister might have him shot, but compared to A Killing Winter (book 1) and a Spring Betrayal (book 2) where he was battling the perpetrators of ritualistic killings, international corruption and child prostitution rings, the plot of A Summer Revenge just feels a little tame.

That said, this is still a cut above many other novels in the genre and the depiction of Dubai is fresh and intriguing.

3 out of 5 stars

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley

I borrowed this title from NetGalley, a review service that I use, having not heard of the author before. I was attracted to the title by the striking cover art and the book’s description, with its talk of an isolated village amid a moor, the devil stalking the fens at night. I was expecting a supernatural horror and indeed Devil’s Day is billed as such on Amazon. In some ways, this is an accurate description of the book, it certainly has a supernatural element, but as far as horror fiction goes it’s a slow burn. Devil’s Day might more accurately be described as a drama with a deep sense of foreboding.

The novel’s protagonist, John Pentecrost, is a school teacher who works at a public school in the south of England. Every year he returns to his family farm in rural Lancashire to help his father and grandfather bring the sheep down from the moor and partake in traditional rituals to keep the people and animals of the local community safe from the devil. The novel begins with John bringing his new wife, Katherine (Kat), who’s pregnant with their first child, with him for the first time.  John’s grandfather, popularly known as “the Gaffer”, has just died and his father is getting on in years, so John – who’s increasingly restless in his job - is thinking of broaching the subject with Kat of their moving back to Lancashire to take over the farm.   

As the plot unfolds there are tensions galore. The community John introduces Kat into is extremely wary of strangers and she struggles to fit in. She finds it difficult to understand their old ways and some of them clearly think she’s not up to it. Woodland nearby has recently been burnt down and locals blame a problem family amongst them, members of which have been in prison, bullied other kids at the village school, and generally act in an antisocial manner. As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that John and other members of his extended family hide dark secrets.

Reading Devil’s Day, at first it seems that the superstitions and folklore that the community adhere to are just that, that this is a remote village, cut off from the 21^st Century that is backwards and quaint. As past secrets are unearthed, the reader might even conclude that this folklore has been used to cover up terrible deeds committed by the community’s members. Strange things do happen, some of which appear to have a supernatural root. By the end of the novel, and at risk of divulging spoilers, it is up to the reader to decide what is real and what is not.

This is a slow burning novel full of evocative and haunting description. The tension and foreboding ratchets inexorably upwards, but is never gratuitous and not particularly scary. This is more of an unsettling tale, not least for a city dweller like myself. I found myself wondering whether there are indeed communities like this, the kinds of places where if you wandered in and were particularly unlucky, you might not ever leave. That said, the plot of Devil’s Day did meander somewhat and the ending seemed rushed.

3 out of 5 stars