A Quick Synopsis: The Kennedy Paradox

Robert P. Fitton

The Kennedy Paradox

At the beginning of The Kennedy Paradox President Kennedy is alive in 1986 and there was no Vietnam war. Wow… Would that it could be true. The original book Redshift American cities are incinerated in nuclear attacks led by terrorist Carlos Sanchez. Patch Kincaid is part of a secret experimental time travel project in Colorado. Ray Meinkewitz, in charge of the project desperately sends Patch two months back in time to warn everyone what is about to happen. But as John Lennon said ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

And alas our hero ends up in 1961. Warning everyone back there would be like spitting into the wind. What Patch does, however, is contact the young Meinkewitz, just beginning his time travel work at a small college in Maryland. After considerable consternation Meinkewitz is convinced that Patch has popped in from the destructive future. Using his contacts Meinkewitz gets into the historical nitty gritty of intelligence operatives of the period, complete with pseudonym cover names.

No one believes the outlandish time travel story and they all think Patch is working for the Russians. Patch, however, figures out the date when the chief bomb maker of the future, Dr. Stephen Higgins defected to the Soviet Union.

The race is on with Meinkewitz and the intelligence boys to stop Higgins off the coast of Florida. For Patch this will save the future. For the intelligence services a notable scientist will be prevented from sharing vital secrets. Higgins does defect which sets the stage for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

When I rewrote Redshift I began studying the period in earnest. The added research merges reality and fantasy. Patch, knowing Carlos Sanchez killed prominent Mafia members in the original timeline meets the Mafia kingpins of the day, becoming close to Johnny Roselli. Both Patch and the Mafia want Sanchez dead. Roselli and the others use their intelligence connections to bring Patch and Meinkewitz into the Bay of Pigs invasion so Sanchez can be killed. Thus, the Mafia leaders will live and the future will be spared a nuclear holocaust.

Through the eyes of Patch and Meinkewitz this book details a vivid and accurate description of the failed invasion, the capture of exiles, and President Kennedy taking responsibility for the debacle.

Here is the central thrust of the book which leads to the second novel in the Patch Kincaid series Return to Dallas: Patch Kincaid going back in time causes JFK to be assassinated.