Everybody remembers where they were the day John F. Kennedy died. The president’s assassination shocked the world and raised questions that have still not been answered today.

Almost as shocking is attempted assassination – the bullet that missed; the bomb that did not go off; the poison that did not work. Dodging the Bullet looks at the most spectacular of these, from attempts on royals like George II and Queen Victoria, where dysfunctional men with unreliable guns lurked in the shrubbery of parks to the astonishing 634 attempts to kill and/or discredit Fidel Castro.

Anybody in the public eye is a potential victim for an assassin. Anybody with access to the most easily obtained weapons is a potential killer. The fascination lies in the mix of these two – the random meeting of the famous and the deranged.

Dodging the Bullet has professional hitmen working for sinister organizations and governments. It has security services who are nothing of the sort. It has arrogant and complacent rulers of states who believe in their own immortality – ‘Honey, I forgot to duck,’ as President Ronald Reagan said.

Why the bullet missed is one of the imponderables. Another is; what difference would it have made if it had not?