Snapshot by Lis Wiehl

This contemporary novel has its roots in the 1960s. Four year old Lisa's father James, an FBI agent, had been assigned to Dallas to help in the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination. About a year and a half later, James takes Lisa to a demonstration in Fort Worth. She sees a little African American girl about her age and sits by her. James takes a couple of snap shots. Just at that time shots ring out and a well known man leading the demonstration is killed.

In the present, Lisa is a federal prosecutor in Boston. She is surprised when she receives a request from her father, a man with whom she has a distant relationship. Now retired from the FBI, he wants her to help free the man convicted of that demonstrator's death over forty years ago and find the real killer.

That's the beginning of this low key novel. The plot involves trying to find out who actually killed the demonstrator and why another man was arrested and convicted. There is the possibility of a cover-up that may go all the way to the top.

There is not a great deal of action in this novel. It deals more with investigative procedure, such as using face recognition software in trying to find out the identity of the little African American girl. There is a tiny bit of suspense at the end but it resolves almost as fast as it arises.

If you like investigative procedural novels, solving a murder decades ago, you'll like this one. Personally, I would have liked a little more suspense.

The strength of this novel is that it is based on the actual experiences of the author and her father. He was, in fact, an FBI agent sent to Dallas to help in the Kennedy assassination. She and her dad did, in fact, go to a demonstration in Fort Worth where her photo was taken with a little African American girl. Recently being shown that snapshot, her creative thoughts began to flow and this novel is a result.

Lis Wiehl is a New York Times best-selling author, a Harvard Law graduate and former federal prosecutor. She is a legal analyst and commentator for the Fox News Channel.

Thomas Nelson, 320 pages.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher for the purpose of this review.