Book Reviews
Riding
the
Tiger's
Back:
A
Footnote
to
the
Assassination
of
JFK
by
Phillip
Hemenway
Frightening
story
about
a
man
who
claimed
Lee
Harvey
Oswald
told
him
his
plan
to
kill
the
president
"Riding the Tiger's Back is based on documents discovered in 1988 by Karl von Kleist in his deceased father's estate. The documents tell the story of Robert Clayton Buick who befriended Karl's dad, Ricard ("Ric").
"Buick moved to Mexico from Southern California in the '60s and became a bullfighter. While there, he claimed, he also worked for the U.S. government as an agent in Mexico City observing people at the Hotel Luma where he claimed he met Lee Harvey Oswald, who told Buick of his intent to assassinate President Kennedy. Buick allegedly reported this conversation.
"Buick turned to robbing banks, crossing the border into the U.S. to commit the crimes. He made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. He was convicted and given three 20-year sentences. Strangely, he was released after barely serving five years. While Buick was in prison, Jim Garrison's Office was contacting him and Ricard von Kleist. Before he was released, Buick was questioned "about the Sirhan thing" by Los Angeles investigators. He then seemingly disappeared.
"Riding the Tiger's Back describes the frightening experiences that happened to the von Kleist family when Ricard became involved with Buick's story. And it tells what author Hemenway and Ricard's son experienced while working on this book." --Assassination Symposium, John F. Kennedy, 30th Anniversary
"... startling ... worth a study." --John Austin, Books of the Week
"... I don't use this show to sell books, but you should read Riding the Tiger's Back by Phillip Hemenway." --Bruce Sessions Show, KPAY Radio
"The story is so weird ... it touches on all the madness, and it builds a case that the government was closely involved in monitoring -- let's say it more clearly, spying on and terrorizing -- anyone who came close to the JFK story." --Elizabeth Kieszkowski, News and Review
"Riding the Tiger's Back is gritty and unsettling reading." --Dan Barnett, KHSL-TV
"… the story heats up toward the last half of the book, as Hemenway finds himself … directly involved in tracking down the mysterious Buick, who unaccountably had been released from a 20 year sentence in only a few years. Here Hemenway is his most gripping, and the story holds the reader to the very end. So hold on tight. … " --The Biblio File, Chico Enterprise-Record
"Three chapters into the book and it was clear Hemenway had pulled an end run around the assassination field with his first person narrative that reads as entertainingly as a Raymond Chandler novel. The book is full of the observations of a watchful intelligence that takes very little for granted. …
"Riding the Tiger's Back is a nest of Chinese boxes, of tales within tales about interesting, not average, people.
"The outer box, the frame, is a story of Phil Hemenway trying to pull together a disarray of information from several sources, struggling to make a coherent whole out of a chaotic jumble of facts. …
"The next box gives us the story of Karl von Kleist, a forty-five year old policeman who found a box of papers after his father--Ricard von Kleist--died. The box contained notes and letters between Ric von Kleist and one Robert Clayton Buick who was (at the time of the correspondence) serving time in a federal prison for bank robbery. …
"Buick--the inner box in this puzzle--had drifted from getting blisters in a steel mill in LA to bell boy in Palm Springs to wine steward aboard a luxury liner to bullfighter and businessman in Mexico. He lived a fast, hard life, a life that probably fascinated the crippled Ric von Kleist.
"But one particular part of Buick's life most fascinated von Kleist--and this is the central point of Riding the Tiger's Back. Buick claimed to have been a government informant in Mexico City in 1963, that Lee Harvey Oswald told him of his plans to kill President Kennedy, and that he, Buick, had reported Oswald's threats to the government agents (CIA) for whom he worked. …
"Hemenway does not offer his book as a final fix for the Association of Assassination Addicts, as he calls them. … The book is a volatile persuasive read … written in a superior prose and is a straight-forward, clear, and interesting book full of excellent speculation that never slips into drag and tries to pass itself off as proof."--Dennis Ross, Senior Lifestyle
"… The only other book that I've seen that has any reference to Robert Clayton Buick is a five page spread in Dick Russel's huge book The Man Who Knew Too Much. … Is Robert Buick's story believable or as the author says, is it just another footnote in the puzzle of Dealy Plaza?--Peter Kross, editor, Back Channels
Order Riding the Tiger's Back: A Footnote to the Assassination of JFK by Phillip Hemenway