Dr. Mary's Monkey by Edward T. Haslam, Jim Marrs (2007)

Ever have a nagging doubt that maybe, just maybe, some people have a LOT more power than is healthy for the rest of us? This book just may put that doubt at rest -- and certainty!

I first got interested in this book when I recently had the opportunity to hear the author speak at a book signing. Before I went I went to look up his book Mary, Ferrie and the Monkey Virus on Amazon.com. Though it was published in 1995 -- relatively recently in other words -- only one used copy was available: for $500. Yikes! I saw this as an indication that what the author has to say just MIGHT be something that causes books to be suppressed and burned. I went to hear about it "from the horse's mouth."

I was impressed by Haslam. A very steady, non-gimmicky, common-sense type person who made it clear that he never wanted to write a book. It's just that, growing up as the son of a doctor in New Orleans, different information kept intriguing him over the years just enough to cause him to research more, question more and document his findings. People told him he should write a book and for many years he fought that idea. I'm glad he finally wrote the book(s)!

After writing the first book -- which is from what I understand the same as the most recent book only WITHOUT the two live witnesses he later met, and who affected his thinking and conclusions, changed this book -- and improved it -- considerably.

I'm a very critical reader and I'll admit there were a few times I wished I had been hired to edit this book. It's GOOD, but not without roughness that could easily have been cleaned up by a good editor (such as awkward and sometimes annoying redundancies and a few typos and misspellings here and there), but my guess is that most readers will not be bothered by those things. The part about Dr. Ochsner, where he talks a lot about Ochsner for maybe 10 pages, got awfully dry for me, but it was probably important for documentation. There were a few spots in the book where I was not glued to the page, it's true.

However this book was not compiled or published to entertain me or you. It was published to inform us. To let us know about some things that a LOT of people seem to have been killed to keep us from finding out about. For this reason alone I consider Mr. Haslam to be a very courageous man and a modern-day hero for publishing this book. It is people like Haslam that we need more than we need any other one type of person: people with caring and conscientiousness that do things because they are the RIGHT thing to do and not just for fame, money or power. Thank you, Ed. You're gold in my book!

Back to the book: All that I said above notwithstanding, for the most part I could barely put down this book from beginning to finish (though I had to in order to work, etc.). The implications of this book are so far-reaching that it makes me understand in a more personal way than I ever imagined possible just how much the assassination of President Kennedy and a secret lab in New Orleans affects ME (and YOU) all these many, many years later.

I wish dearly I could find a copy of the book written by one of the witnesses he finally met, Judyth Vary Baker. I have read that it was 700 pages in length and titled "Lee Harvey Oswald." She was his lover and it is about that, but it is about much more than that, and just what Haslam documents about her in his book alone convinces me Judyth is the real McCoy.