The Tears of Autumn is American author Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry is an American writer primarily of spy fiction.-Life:McCarry served in the United States Army, where he was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, has been a small-town newspaperman, and was a speechwriter in the Eisenhower administration. From 1958 to 1967 he worked for the CIA,...

's second novel, and the second novel in the Paul Christopher series.

Plot

In November 1963, American intelligence officer Paul Christopher investigates the assassination of US President John F Kennedy

Assassination of John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...

. Believing that the Kennedy White House was behind the assassination of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem

Ngo Dinh Diem

Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...

, Christopher deduces that Vietnamese leaders had Kennedy assassinated as revenge. When one of Kennedy's former advisers threatens Christopher not to discuss the matter with anyone else, Christopher quits the Agency and heads to Vietnam to find the truth.