The Kennedy Moment

By Peter Adamson

‘Nothing could be simpler… Don’t wear a suit’

Dr Michael Lowell—a mild–mannered American, unshakeably decent and at the top of his profession—accepts an invitation to a weekend reunion of Oxford college friends. He is looking forward to meeting some of them—including front-line Canadian medic Hélène Hevré and the Australian advertising genius Toby Jenks. But the big attraction is the serene young woman from Karachi who rejected him twenty years ago because he was ‘just a little bit too dull’.

As the weekend gets under way and old loves and tensions arise, an audacious suggestion is made. It begins as a joke. But it is a joke that none of them can forget.

Moving between Oxford, New York, Washington, Geneva and Abidjan, this compelling political thriller is the story of five ordinary people who find themselves drawn into an extraordinary conspiracy—a gamble that could force the hand of governments and affect the lives of millions. But if it should go wrong …

Daring, ingenious and profoundly moving, The Kennedy Moment is masterful storytelling from an author whose career has put him at the heart of international affairs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Myriad Editions
• Release date: Feb 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912408085

Peter Adamson

Peter Adamson is professor of philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, including A History of Philosophy without Any Gaps: Philosophy in the Islamic World.

Reviews for The Kennedy Moment

[vicki_weisfeld · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this political thriller by former UNICEF official Peter Adamson, the reunion of five college friends launches a do-good project that none of them could have anticipated, that has every potential of imminently and disastrously going off the rails, and that has almost incomparably high stakes. In the early 1960s, a group of Oxford University students were best friends. As Stephen Walsh, a stubbornly Marxist professor writes to the others, “We’ve lost touch, the months drifting into years and the years into decades.” He proposes a reunion, and leading up to it, you learn a bit about the others, all people of accomplishment in their varied spheres. Michael Lowell, the only American, leads a World Health Organization team on childhood immunization; Seema Mir works on a biography of the African American Hemings family; Toby Jenks is the hard-drinking creative director of an advertising agency; and Canadian Hélène Hevré is a physician, exhausted from the demands of tending patients within the minimalist health care system of Côte d’Ivoire. The relationships among these friends, especially the two almost-couples (Michael and Seema; Toby and Hélène), are believable and sometimes painful because the characters are so engaging. At the reunion, Toby, with his flair for the dramatic, responds to the health professionals’ angst over vaccine-preventable illnesses saying, “Seems to me, possums, the obvious thing to do here is to get hold of a little test tube of [cached smallpox virus] and threaten to blow bubbles with it in Times Square unless the world gets off its butt and immunizes every last kiddie.”A few months later, the friends reunite in New York. No one has forgotten Toby’s little joke, and before long they have a plan to use smallpox virus to blackmail the US government into fulfilling its immunization commitments. But it must be carried out in complete secrecy.Predictably, the government focuses not on meeting these mysterious demands, but on finding out who is behind this little venture and stopping it. To them, it’s bioterrorism, and a nail-biting chase is on. Meanwhile, Toby crafts a powerful statement for the US President: “Twenty years ago, President John F Kennedy committed the United States to the goal of putting a man on the moon within a decade. Today, the United States commits itself to another great goal: a goal for our times; a goal to be achieved here on earth; the goal of immunizing all of the world’s children against the major killer diseases of childhood.” I loved this book and the daring team of characters that took on the crimes of neglect and half-measures.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was one of those reckless, serendipitous purchases that arose from. One afternoon I found myself in the marvellous Daunt Books in Marylebone, and came across a stack of copies of this books. I started reading the flyleaf, and had noted the word ‘conspiracy’ when I was distracted by my phone pinging to flag up an incoming message. I have always had a deep, almost obsessive, interest in the assassination of President Kennedy, perhaps because my grandfather died on the same day. (I hasten to add that he passed away in Edinburgh, and was nowhere near a grassy knoll.) Based upon the title of this book and having my curiosity pricked by that use of the ‘c’ word, I didn’t read any further, and just assumed that this was another exploration of that tragic ancient, and added it to the stack of books I was buying. If I had read further down the liner notes, I would have found that this book has nothing to do with the President’s assassination. It is, however, an engrossing political and medical thriller. Opening in 1980, it follows a group of former friends who had graduated from Oxford University some twenty years earlier. Out of the blue, one of them, who has stayed on at the University and become a Fellow in their old college, invites the others back to a reunion. Two of the five are involved in medicine: one had led the world changing campaign to eradicate smallpox and is now a senior administrator in the World Health organisation, while another is still working in the field in Africa, leading a mission to try to fight the seemingly relentless spread of disease. At the reunion, it is their respective experiences of the sharp end of medicine, and their observations of how diseases for which relatively straightforward and inexpensive immunisation might be available were still claiming millions of victims each year, that come to dominate the conversations.As drink flows, and they retreat into nostalgia for their former idealism, they come to speculate about how they might draw wider public attention to the situation in Africa and maybe make a difference. Of course, most of us have had such conversations, wondering ‘what if …?’ In this instance, they start to consider the question more deeply, and are moved to act.After a slightly slow start, this novel suddenly clicks into gear and races along. Adamson has worked in medicine and medical administration, and displays his expertise in the field without allowing the story to be bogged down in technicalities. He also draws his characters well. While they come to share a clear aim, they are also beset with petty jealousies, and the shadow of their former relationships is also hard to cast off.There were some annoying anachronisms, such as a reference to Channel 4 in 1980, but it is a fascinating and entertaining novel.