Inside the Conspiracies and Truths Behind The Twilight Town
By Terrence McCauley
A popular element of the modern thriller novel is that you’re not paranoid if someone’s actually watching you. History shows us that yesterday’s conspiracy theories are today’s accepted truth. Rumors are often based in some kind of truth that get mangled in the retelling. That’s true in our own lives. That’s true in the lives of nations as well.
Fiction has the luxury of rushing into territory where non-fiction fears to tread. A novel isn’t burdened by the validation of peer reviews and the proper citation of source material. A novel can explore controversial issues and varieties of theories. The only limits are the author’s imagination and the reader’s willingness to go along with the story as written.
But fiction has a long history of sparking the imagination. Look at how science fiction has spurred many of the technological advances we enjoy today. Novels like ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ brought focus to important social issues. Education is often more palatable to the masses in a fictional setting.
Historical events often provide fertile ground for novels. Remember Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’? What about Michael Shaara’s ‘The Killer Angels’? Many of us might’ve been bored by Civil War and Art History classes in school, but both novels sparked renewed interest into such topics. I know ‘The Killer Angels’ sparked my interest in reading – and ultimately writing – historical fiction.
I believe historical fiction is at its strongest when it’s anchored in facts. Take James Ellroy’s impressive body of work about mid-twentieth century America. His novels often have a historical context that enhances his narrative. He takes people and eras we’ve only seen in documentaries and makes them characters to whom we can relate. He strips the sepia patina from his subjects. He makes the legend real through sharp dialogue and descriptions that create a cadence of conflict. His work isn’t about historical events. It’s about the flawed people behind those events.
Anyone who has read my crime novels or thriller novels won’t be surprised that Ellroy has been a huge influence in my career as a writer. And reading his ‘Underworld USA’ trilogy years ago only validated my existing interest in the Kennedy assassination started by Oliver Stone’s film ‘JFK’. But Ellroy did something different. He eschewed the low hanging fruit of who was on the grassy knoll. He focused on why they were there.
Ellroy wasn’t the first or the last to tackle the Kennedy tragedy in a novel. Other notable novels I’ve read on the subject include: ‘November Road’ by Lou Berney, ‘Libra’ by Don DeLillo, ‘11/22/63’ by Stephen King, ‘The Ninth Man’ by Steve Berry and Grant Blackwood and ‘The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress’ by Guy Cote. Each work explores the Kennedy assassinations in different, unique ways.
These books – and countless non-fiction books/documentaries – inspired me to write my Dallas ’63 Trilogy from yet another perspective. The event as a crime.
I had originally intended on telling the entire story strictly from one Dallas PD detective’s point of view. My research proved that would be impossible. Because just as in life, there were too many plot points to understand from only one character’s perspective.
I decided to write about three Dallas cops who gradually find themselves entangled in the conspiracy, but for different reasons.
Detective Dan Wilson of Dallas PD’s Special Investigations Bureau has lived his entire life in the shadow of his famous Texas Ranger father, Duke Wilson. He decides to forge his own path by digging deep into the links between the Dallas underworld and the Dallas PD. He hopes to leave The Big D for the FBI. His investigation uncovers an informant who sees more than he understands. A misfit named Lee Oswald.
Wilson’s ex-partner, Officer JD Tippit, is behind the eight-ball. He has bills he can’t pay and dreams he’ll never realize. After he asks Wilson’s help in a love triangle gone horribly wrong, Tippit agrees to help Wilson protect his new informant Oswald. Tippit quickly realizes he could trade Oswald for something better and make a fast buck doing it. Friendship and self-interest clash.
Officer Harry Denton is a bigoted, crooked cop with deep ties to Dallas PD brass and the underworld’s Jack Ruby. When he sees his chance to change the course of history, he grabs it with both hands.
The Tippit of ‘The Twilight Town’ is a heavily fictionalized version of the real Officer Tippit who was gunned down in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas soon within minutes of President Kennedy’s assassination. The Warren Commission tells us Oswald killed Tippit in a panic. Research tells us that probably wasn’t the case. Dan Wilson and Harry Denton are fictional characters based on several people who played a role in the events leading up to that day.
Michael Frost Beckner – a talented thriller writer of ‘Spy Game’ fame – is a mentor of mine. He taught me to always ask two questions whenever I start a new book: Why this story? Why now?
I asked myself those questions quite a bit when I was thinking about tackling this subject. I think the reason why the JFK assassination has resonated with generations of people for the past sixty years is that we can relate to it. We can tell there’s something that’s not quite right with the official story we learned in school.
At first, I was drawn in by the allure of Camelot 1960s style. The youthful, stylish president whose administration was ushering in change, only to be destroyed by an insignificant ‘lone nut’.
But history, just like life, isn’t as simple as that. It’s easy for us to believe the early 1960s was a more refined time than today. It wasn’t. Both eras were burdened by social unrest, political upheaval and global turmoil. In fact, Kennedy’s reelection in 1964 was far from certain. He was in Dallas to shore up support in the south.
Instead of relating the similarities of the eras in a non-fiction book, I chose to make those correlations in a novel. I wanted to show my readers that – just like Wilson and Tippit and Denton – our vision of ourselves often clashes with reality. That our dreams are often realized as a by-product of someone else’s ambition rather than our own design. It was true then. It’s true now.
The Kennedy saga’s ongoing appeal is also due to the presence of clear heroes and clear villains. Good versus bad. The overworld of the Kennedys and their cultured cadre ushering in a new age with power, prestige and pizzaz. The underworld where the likes of Oswald, Jack Ruby and the mob scheme in the shadows to thwart our heroes.
My own research and recent government disclosures prove that the truth is far stranger than any fiction a novelist could create. The new material doesn’t resolve the debate about the number of shooters or shots fired in Dealey Plaza. Instead, the truth, as it often does, lies in less conspicuous places.
Those are the people I’ve chosen to write about in my Dallas ’63 Trilogy. It’s their stories that make ‘The Twilight Town’ relevant to today’s audiences. The background characters in the forefront. The links between those who knew Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby. Their motivations and personal histories. The facts that are too glaring for jaded modern audiences to write off as mere coincidence.
That’s why I believe that fiction in general – and historical fiction in specific – are important to modern readers. Because although the people of the 1960s didn’t have cellphones or the internet or Artificial Intelligence, they had the same kinds of concerns we have in 2025. They had people they cared about. They had dreams. They had faith in something greater than themselves. And they were forced to face the harsh reality that their faith might have been misplaced. That the world was far more dangerous than it previously seemed. That danger wasn’t just something to worry about in a far off battlefield in Europe or Asia. It was something brought directly into their living room by radio and television.
Historical fiction can lend a fresh perspective to another time in our shared history. It can help us see that times may change, but our fears and motivations do not.
Terrence McCauley is an award-winning, bestselling author of more than thirty novels across several genres, including thrillers, crime fiction and westerns. ‘The Twilight Town’ is the first novel in his ‘Dallas ‘63’ series from Level Best Books. He is also the host of the Spies, Lies and Private Eyes podcast on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Visit his website at www.terrencemccauley.com.
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