The Kennedy name has long been synonymous with wealth, power, glamor, and integrity. But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the pattern of Kennedy men physically and psychologically abusing women and girls, leaving a trail of ruin and death in each generation's wake.
Callahan refloats unfounded claims that suggest both JFK and Robert F. Kennedy were somehow involved in Marilyn Monroe’s suicide ... Callahan has a good eye for lurid details ... The anecdotes that make up this book are not news, but Callahan strings them together in a way that makes the House of Kennedy look like Bluebeard’s castle of horrors.
What does Callahan hope to add to this vale of tears? Only her residual and, yes, partisan and ideological suspicion that despite ample testimony (in many cases from the victims themselves), the Kennedy men have somehow gotten away with it all ... Callahan, despite her insistence that "the Kennedys remain a powerful and frequently destructive force," is essentially writing a history. That being the case, we should note that her sources include The National Enquirer, journalist-ragpickers like Kitty Kelley and a rotating crew of ax-grinders.
Lacerating ... An angry sympathy for the women "broken, tormented, raped, murdered or left for dead" by the Kennedys inflames and sometimes envenoms Callahan’s writing ... The book tries to conclude with a quietly triumphal coda.
