I have been reading Exchange Alley, the thriller by Michael Walsh available for 99 cents on Kindle, and I recommend it for fans of the hard-boiled-suspenser genre. I agree with his own assessment of the book in a recent Corner post: This is emphatically not a book for the squeamish, the prudish, or the politically correct. I should also note that our Mr. Walsh is a sly one, as befits writers in this genre. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is a major subplot in the story, and Walsh has one of his characters, in 1990, leave a suicide note that reads as follows: “To leave this life is, for me, a sweet prospect. I find nothing in it that is desirable and on the other hand everything that is loathsome.”

This will ring a bell with roughly 0.013 percent of readers, the vast majority of which 0.013 also would score rather high on the paranoia scale. Who originally wrote these words of near-Roman eloquence, simplicity, and stoicism? If you believe the New Orleans police, it was David Ferrie, one of New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison’s suspects in his Kennedy conspiracy theory. I stress, if you believe the New Orleans police, and if you believe it was really a suicide . . .