A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer

by Nina Burleigh

Paperback, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

973.922

Publication

Bantam (1999), Edition: First Edition, First Printing, Paperback, 380 pages

Description

"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil meets Camelot."--Washington Post Book World In 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer, the beautiful, rebellious, and intelligent ex-wife of a top CIA official, was killed on a quiet Georgetown towpath near her home. Mary Meyer was a secret mistress of President John F. Kennedy, whom she had known since private school days, and after her death, reports that she had kept a diary set off a tense search by her brother-in-law, newsman Ben Bradlee, and CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton. But the only suspect in her murder was acquitted, and today her life and death are still a source of intense speculation, as Nina Burleigh reveals in her widely praised book, the first to examine this haunting story. Praise for A Very Private Woman "Power is so utterly fascinating. Sometimes it's used for evil purposes, like the kind of power that has silenced the telling of Mary Pinchot Meyer's mysterious murder for over three decades. In A Very Private Woman, Nina Burleigh has finally told this tragic tale of a privileged beauty with friends in high places."--Dominick Dunne "A superbly crafted, evocative glimpse of an adventurous spirit whose grisly murder remains a mystery."--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "Proves that every Washington sex scandal is juicy in its own way."--Glamour "Nina Burleigh has dissected Washington's most intriguing murder mystery and produced a captivating biography, a thriller, and an insightful portrait of Georgetown in its golden presidential age."--Christopher Ogden, bestselling author of Life of the Party: The Life of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman "Provocative, erudite . . . pure Georgetown noir."--New York Observer "A rich array of real-life characters."--New York Times Book Review… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member moonshineandrosefire
This is the story of Mary Meyer - President Kennedy's mistress. I read this and it was very good, if a little over-involved in the writing. I liked this story very much and give it a B+!
LibraryThing member Auntie-Nanuuq
ah... 2 Stars......maybe 3 Stars (if you like lots of information & politics)

This reads like a long and boring (as in TMI) novel. The crux is an upper-crust, privileged, gal meets JFK while at Prep-School & on Vassar weekends. They meet up again after she's just gotten married at the opening of a
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U.N. Convention in San Francisco....and they continue to meet socially & politically on & off through the years. Her husband turns out to be a strong willed, opinionated sod high within the u.s. government (CIA), whom she divorces.....and so on & so forth.

She continues her life in the upper crust social & political circles, where she becomes particularly close friends w/ the President, JFK......

So let's see, one evening she goes for her evening walk, is found murdered on the tow path, and the police see some hapless black man who had been fishing and try to railroad him!

I didn't need to read all the intimate details of her family life, I just wanted to know the juicy bits and I got very fed up trying to skim the pages in order to get to the actual story that the title suggests.

Booooooooooooooring!
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Language

Physical description

380 p.; 6 inches

ISBN

0553380516 / 9780553380514
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