The year is 1960. "Psycho" is playing in movie houses. Business is booming at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club. And on black-and-white television sets, America is watching the Nixon-Kennedy debates. While the world turns, some people share a staggering secret: the Mob, the CIA, and the next president of the United States are all in bed together with a hit man and a plan -- to kill Fidel Castro.

Tom Jefferson kills for a living, and he's very good at his job. Fresh off a one-hundred-and-fifty yard takedown of a Nazi in Buenos Aires, Tom has now walked into a room full of wise guys and Company men in Coral Gables. The mobsters want Cuba back. Presidential candidate Jack Kennedy has promised they'll get it. Because Mob boss Sam Giancana has fixed the November election, he knows JFK will be in a position to deliver. And because the Mafia has incriminating tapes of Jack's sexual escapades, they know he'll keep his promise.

Tom is the man they all want for the shooting of Castro. And he couldn't care less what his clients' motives are or why. Tom has a good life, a beautiful wife, and the perfect fall guy for the Castro hit. But as Tom gets ready for his trip to Cuba, a corrupt FBI acquaintance lures him to a safe house where he's exposed to explosive information, Now, the perfect hit is turning into the perfect nightmare for the Mob, the CIA, and the United States. That's because cool, murdering Tom Jefferson has gone missing -- and the word is out that he's no longer gunning for Fidel Castro, but for Jack Kennedy....

From the brilliant mind of Philip Kerr, THE SHOT is a wild roller-coaster ride through the cultural, political, and social landscape of the 1960s -- a mesmerizingthriller that elevates conspiracy theory into a hugely entertaining art form and sheds an eerie light on the events in 1963 Dallas. With its cast of fictional and real characters -- icons from DiMaggio to Monroe -- Kerr's masterful new novel captures a Cold War, black-and-white society on the verge of a decade of dizzying, confusing Technicolor.