JFK

It seems surprising that there has never before been a book by Jean Hill, familiar to JFK assassination buffs as ``the lady in red'' who was standing only feet away from the presidential car when the shots were fired. She testified and insisted through years of discouragement, disbelief and distortions on the part of investigators, the FBI, the Warren Commission and others, that she saw an unidentifiable man firing from the grassy knoll and later a person who looked exactly like Jack Ruby running toward that man. Readers of this swollen account, coauthored with a Dallas journalist, will discover that Hill early on decided to add nothing further, having been intimidated by frequent phone threats, the sabotage of her car and an alarming move against one of her children. Only when she came to know Jim Marrs, author of one of the books on which Oliver Stone's film JFK was based , and later the movie people themselves, did she come out of her shell and rejoice in her standing as the last living major dissenting witness. Her tale is often engaging, sometimes infuriating; the feisty schoolteacher emerges ultimately as something of a folk heroine. Much of the later sections of the book, in which Hill becomes starry-eyed about the movie folk, could have been severely trimmed. Still, her story is salutary for those overly respectful of official authority. (May)