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Late 1966. A sharp young FBI agent finds himself summoned to J. Edgar Hoover’s office for an extremely important and highly confidential assignment: to fly to Dallas and interview a dying man who might just know the secrets behind one of the greatest crimes in American history. A dying man who’s also a murderer—indeed, whose own guilt was never in doubt, because his crime was committed in front of journalists and policemen, broadcast on live TV, and plastered on the front page of newspapers across the globe. A dying man, and an infamous one: Jack Ruby.
But Special Agent Bergman soon finds himself enmeshed in intrigue and suspicion, mayhem and paranoia. The turbulent decade that started careening into chaos three years before in Dealey Plaza has now crashed; the pillars of society are crumbling. An ex-partner just happens to be in town, drowning in drink and regret, possibly keeping an eye on Bergman but maybe simply nursing himself through a shady assignment called COINTELPRO. There's a beautiful and elusive woman who once danced for Jack Ruby, and who may know more about his dark, paranoid world than she lets on. Meanwhile a prosecutor in nearby New Orleans is embarking on a quixotic crusade to upend everything the Bureau thinks it knows about that November weekend in 1963. To top it all off, his hospitalized interviewee is drugged and dazed, sometimes lucid and sometimes muddled by morphine; he’s babbling about Judaism and history, about the Holocaust and Al Capone. And he’s also obsessed with a world-champion Jewish boxer and decorated World War II hero who also just happens to be a loyal lifelong friend: one who grew up running gangster errands with Ruby on the cacophonous streets of Chicago, one who might be a distraction for Bergman and might also be the key to everything—a man named Barney Ross.
Joshua Corey has carved out a niche for himself in the world of literary fiction. Now he stakes his claim to a larger territory, clearing a place for himself on the JFK-assassination bookshelf alongside novels like Don DeLillo’s Libra and Stephen King’s 11/22/63, while also providing insights about Jewish identity worthy of The Netanyahus, and honoring the hard-boiled heritage of James Ellroy. It’s a pulse-pounding crime caper and a cerebrum-stimulating work of art; once you’re done with it, it will not be done with you.
But Special Agent Bergman soon finds himself enmeshed in intrigue and suspicion, mayhem and paranoia. The turbulent decade that started careening into chaos three years before in Dealey Plaza has now crashed; the pillars of society are crumbling. An ex-partner just happens to be in town, drowning in drink and regret, possibly keeping an eye on Bergman but maybe simply nursing himself through a shady assignment called COINTELPRO. There's a beautiful and elusive woman who once danced for Jack Ruby, and who may know more about his dark, paranoid world than she lets on. Meanwhile a prosecutor in nearby New Orleans is embarking on a quixotic crusade to upend everything the Bureau thinks it knows about that November weekend in 1963. To top it all off, his hospitalized interviewee is drugged and dazed, sometimes lucid and sometimes muddled by morphine; he’s babbling about Judaism and history, about the Holocaust and Al Capone. And he’s also obsessed with a world-champion Jewish boxer and decorated World War II hero who also just happens to be a loyal lifelong friend: one who grew up running gangster errands with Ruby on the cacophonous streets of Chicago, one who might be a distraction for Bergman and might also be the key to everything—a man named Barney Ross.
Joshua Corey has carved out a niche for himself in the world of literary fiction. Now he stakes his claim to a larger territory, clearing a place for himself on the JFK-assassination bookshelf alongside novels like Don DeLillo’s Libra and Stephen King’s 11/22/63, while also providing insights about Jewish identity worthy of The Netanyahus, and honoring the hard-boiled heritage of James Ellroy. It’s a pulse-pounding crime caper and a cerebrum-stimulating work of art; once you’re done with it, it will not be done with you.
Price: $22.99
Pages: 320
Publisher: Tortoise Books
Imprint: Tortoise Books
Publication Date:
24 November 2026
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781965199336
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Historical / 20th Century / General, FICTION / Jewish, FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural, FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense, FICTION / Sea Stories
“Joshua Corey brings a poet’s precision to one of American history’s most shadowy figures. The Last Words of Jack Ruby is taut, lyrical, and deeply unsettling.”
— Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Joshua Corey’s The Last Words of Jack Ruby is as much Ruby’s story as it is ours—its truths emerge from the distinctly violent American mythologies that Ruby hung his worn-out fedora on. Corey’s Ruby is neither brute nor savior, but he’s dying to be both. He’s a pure product of American violence in all of its brawling, hotheaded insecurity. In this impeccably researched and riveting novel, Corey explores the ideologies and obsessions that shape so many of us—the true stories we often tell to evade the truth, and the unfulfilled desires that can destroy us.”
— Tony Trigilio, author of Historic Diary
“The Last Words of Jack Ruby feels like a rare throwback to the great Jewish American books of the 1950s and ’60s—those works where ordinary shlubs from tough immigrant upbringings find themselves entangled in epic reckonings that are at once personal, national, and historical. Wonderfully old-world, yet unmistakably modern, the book fuses the psychological richness of Bellow and the sweeping and faithful historical imagination of Doctorow. Joshua Corey has written a great American novel, a great Jewish American novel, and a great novel about the lifelong friendship between a success and the shlub who never quite catches up."
— Avner Landes, author of The Delegation
— Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Joshua Corey’s The Last Words of Jack Ruby is as much Ruby’s story as it is ours—its truths emerge from the distinctly violent American mythologies that Ruby hung his worn-out fedora on. Corey’s Ruby is neither brute nor savior, but he’s dying to be both. He’s a pure product of American violence in all of its brawling, hotheaded insecurity. In this impeccably researched and riveting novel, Corey explores the ideologies and obsessions that shape so many of us—the true stories we often tell to evade the truth, and the unfulfilled desires that can destroy us.”
— Tony Trigilio, author of Historic Diary
“The Last Words of Jack Ruby feels like a rare throwback to the great Jewish American books of the 1950s and ’60s—those works where ordinary shlubs from tough immigrant upbringings find themselves entangled in epic reckonings that are at once personal, national, and historical. Wonderfully old-world, yet unmistakably modern, the book fuses the psychological richness of Bellow and the sweeping and faithful historical imagination of Doctorow. Joshua Corey has written a great American novel, a great Jewish American novel, and a great novel about the lifelong friendship between a success and the shlub who never quite catches up."
— Avner Landes, author of The Delegation
Joshua Corey is a poet, critic, translator, and novelist. His books include Hannah and the Master, a poetic fantasia on the relationship between Martin Heidegger and Martin Arendt, and the novels Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy and How Long Is Now, both of which could plausibly be described as shaggy-dog stories about grief. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Fortnightly Review, a literary magazine, and sole owner and proprietor of Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, a Substack where he discusses writing, movies, and his obsession with Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of historical novels. He is Professor of English at Lake Forest College outside Chicago and lives in Evanston with his family.