This fascinating non-fiction book is extremely well researched by this new author and it traces in over 36 detailed chapters the development of the assassin in the last 100 years or so. It is almost encyclopaedic in its approach but not lacking in humour as is shown in one of the first examples - the attempted assassination of President Truman on the 1st November 1950 at Blair House, (the White House was being renovated at the time). The two would be assassins shot most of the secret service agents, one by one, who were guarding the President and the President, still in his pyjamas, disturbed from his sleep by all the noise and mayhem that he heard came to investigate and then nearly walked into the path of a bullet, which he would have avoided if he had left it to the secret service guards, who then killed all the assassins.