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Sisyphus Press -- P.O. Box 10495 State College, Pa. 16805-0495 The Spear of Destiny: The Occult Power behind the Spear which pierced the side of Christ by Trevor Ravenscroft For Orders in U.S. only $12.99 plus $12.99 for S&H. AIR MAIL: For Canadian + International Orders (U.S. checks, money orders, or currency only - no Canadian checks, money orders, or currency) |
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Award-winning investigative reporter Leveritt's debut is a wrecking-ball tale of tragedy, malfeasance, and machine politics that resembles an all-true Arkansas Confidential. In 1987, Linda Ives suffered a parental worst-nightmare when her son and a friend were run over by a train, whose crew observed them supine and covered with a tarp before impact. Local law enforcement attributed the deaths to a massive overdose of marijuana and dismissed the crew's tale as optical illusion, in the first of many suspicious official fumbles. Ives compelled a series of investigations that began promisingly yet were inexplicably stifled by such malign forces as the states notoriously incompetent medical examiner (protected by then-Governor Clinton) and an admired local prosecutor who championed her cause as camouflage for his own criminal activities. As years passed, and more unsolved killings occurred, Ives assembled evidence that the boys had stumbled upon a diffuse conspiracy involving CIA-backed air suppliers to the Contras, who ran an enormous cocaine-trafficking operation from a remote airport. Fanciful as this may sound, Leveritt documents how Ives's quest for transparency was consistently stymied, first by local agencies, then by the state police, finally by the FBI. A portrait emerges of state governance as a deeply corrupted good-ol’-boy network, funded by drug money and protected by blackmail and violence. Leveritt's prose is less than taut, and she too often indulges in repetitive emotional rhetoric regarding the Ives's loss. That said, her investigatory efforts seem impeccable; little within this page-turner reads as implausible conspiracy theory. Unlike many works that have dug for the dirt of the Clinton gubernatorial era, this is an authentically shocking, deeply unsettling portrait of contemporary American power backstopped by arrogance and callous greed, and of the drug war as a weapon of social control from which insiders enjoy impunity. One hopes for sufficient outrage garnered to substitute for justice denied; also, for an inevitable movie adaptation that won't dilute the story's uglier civic dimensions. ----------- From Publishers Weekly If this Arkansas murder tale weren't a true-crime thriller by an established investigative journalist, it would be too crazy, complicated and bizarre to believe. The action grips readers from the beginning, with the death of two teenagers, Don Henry and Kevin Ives, told from the perspective of the train engineers who accidentally ran over the boys' bodies. The 1987 case was originally ruled a double suicide, then an accidentAthe boys supposedly smoked too much marijuana and passed out. But their bodies were suspiciously neatly arranged on the train tracks. The parents, rejecting the official explanations, pushed for a murder investigation. Leveritt tells most of the story through the eyes of Linda Ives, Keith's mother, who pursues the medical examiner, the sheriff, then-governor Bill Clinton, the CIA and everyone else she thinks is blocking or slowing the progress of the investigation. The case remains unsolved, and Leveritt draws no conclusions. She merely fleshes out the context and explores all the leads in all their various directions. Yet the further away from the murder she gets, the less compelling her story becomes. Leveritt brings up every wild conspiracy theory in Arkansas and ties each to the boys' death; some of the theories are wacky right-wing fantasies, others are simply small-town oddities. The result is that what should be chilling ends up seeming merely fantastical. From Library Journal This book documents a long and tangled criminal investigation that began in 1987, when Linda Ives's teenage son and his friend were killed by a train near Little Rock, AR. The deaths were ruled accidental. Not satisfied with that finding, Ives launched a series of investigations that eventually touched on the malfeasance of a prominent medical examiner, the misconduct of a local prosecutor, drug trafficking, and governmental corruption. Book Description The Boys on the Tracks is the story of a parent's worst nightmare, a quiet woman's confrontation with a world of murder, drugs, and corruption, where legitimate authority is mocked and the public trust is trampled. It is an intensely personal story and a story of national importance. It is a tale of multiple murders and of justice repeatedly denied. The death of a child is bad enough. To learn that the child was murdered is worse. But few tragedies compare with the story of Linda Ives, whose teenage son and his friend were found mysteriously run over by a train. In the months that followed, Ives's world darkened even more as she gradually came to understand that the very officials she turned to for help could not, or would not, solve the murders. The story of betrayal begins locally but quickly expands. Exposing a web of silence and complicity in which drugs, politics, and murder converge, The Boys on the Tracks is a horrifying story from first page to last, and its most frightening aspect is that all of the story is true. Mara Leveritt has covered this story since it first broke back in 1987. Her approach is one of scrupulous reporting and lively narrative. She weaves profiles and events into a smooth and chilling whole, one that leads the readers to confront, along with Linda Ives, the events' profoundly disturbing implications. A powerful story reminiscent of A Civil Action and Not Without My Daughter, The Boys on the Tracks is destined to become one of the most powerful works published in 1999. |
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