ABOUT THE BOOK

Jack Flippo is a reluctant shyster with a girlfriend whose idea of a fashion icon is Johnny Cash and who displays a family of inflatable adult dolls in her living room as an artistic statement. It is just Flippo's luck to stumble upon Marty Dufrain, the owner of a few frames of B&W film, a rumoured counterpart to the infamous Zapruder home movie, that might show an "umbrella man" or second gunman firing at President Kennedy from the grassy knoll.

Trying to ascertain if this film exists or not he enlists the help of an ex-friend, homicidal con artist making a buck off assassination recreations while keeping his enemies, an oxygen dependent hit man and his cognitively challenged sons-in-law, at bay. The Umbrella Man is a comic caper worthy of Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard but with a uniquely Texas twist.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

'Doug Swanson does Dallas the way Robert Parker does Boston--from the bottom up' - Carl Hiaasen

'You definitely want to be in Dallas when Jack Flippo's on a case' - The New York Times

ESSENTIAL TRIVIA

Doug Swanson is credited with contributing to over 22,500 articles to The Dallas Morning Post since 1985. Would he remember writing these words in January 1985 about Homecoming Night - "The biggest date of her life, and Erica Hoefnagel has trouble. Serious trouble. Curl trouble..." ?