Sparky and the Beard dips into those hazy, almost forgotten days of pre-Vietnam … the 1950s. The unlikely hero is Sparky from Chicago. Born Jacob Rubenstein, he is better known by his adopted name, Jack Ruby, the infamous killer of President Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Dan Baldwin takes historical facts and weaves a fast-paced novel of intrigue, deception and murder, framed around the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro's revolution as he increases his communist stranglehold on the island paradise of Cuba. Under Baldwin's masterful storytelling, Sparky and the Beard is an enjoyable, nerve-wracking experience. Like Sparky, the reader doesn't know who to trust, who will live or how the protagonist will get out of Cuba. History has judged Jack Ruby harshly (though many consider his actions in Dallas in 1963 as justified.) Perhaps Dan's most significant accomplishment in Sparky is his ability to craft the character of Jack Ruby into a sympathetic, even heroic, individual and take the reader and Ruby through compelling twists and turns.
