Legacy of Lies

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance on that sultry afternoon in July 1975, Lew Paper has crafted a fast-paced historical thriller which raises new questions about the reasons for the abduction. The book commences with a startling premise: What if a private investigator had been hired to trail Hoffa in that summer of 1975 and saw him get in a car with three other men, all of whom the investigator knew from his prior experience with the FBI? Would that investigator report what he knew to the FBI when he later learned Hoffa had been abducted - knowing the Mafia's practice of eliminating witnesses to its crimes?

Sam Silver, the former FBI special agent, is that investigator. But he is reluctant to contact the FBI. His only child, a high school student, just lost his mother (and Silver's wife) to cancer, and Sam cannot bear the thought of leaving his son without any parent.

Fast forward eleven years. Sam's son, now a young lawyer in Washington, DC, embarks on an odyssey to determine whether his father's untimely death on a sailboat ten years earlier was, as the coroner determined, an accident. Or was it something more sinister?

In a story filled with unexpected twists and turns, Legacy of Lies brings into focus the forces surrounding Hoffa's disappearance - Bobby Kennedy's vendetta against Hoffa when he was Attorney General, President Richard Nixon's bid for re-election in 1972, and, last but not least, the Mafia.