The assassins : a book of hoursbyJoyce Carol Oates

The Assassins: A Book of Hours (1975) is a novel by 1970 National Book Award for Fiction winner Joyce Carol Oates. It is a psychological tale which dramatizes the effects of the murder of a conservative politician on his wife and two brothers.

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From Dust Jacket - by way of Celestial Timepiece
When a bullet strikes a powerful political figure, when the burial rites are over and done with, when all that remains of that great promise is his lingering charisma, when the affair is investigated, the verdict rendered, what of those who have stood silent in the churchyard—are their lives, too, ripped by the same bullet?

Has the deed been done by one assassin? Is there only one who has been destroyed? Or was there more than one who pulled the trigger, more than one whose life is shattered?

THE ASSASSINS is the story of Andrew Petrie, a wealthy right-wing political figure with a reputation for ruthless honesty. More, it is the story of his surviving brothers, Hugh and Stephen, and of his young widow Yvonne. Members of a large, prominent family, they are nevertheless isolated, each alone with his own enemy, his own assassin. In a state of frozen panic, they realize that Andrew's death has robbed them of the object of their hatred, love, religious compassion—all-consuming emotions that had previously cushioned them against the nightmare of their own emptiness. Their conflicting interpretations of reality—as well as the baffling, tragic events that overtake them—constitute a revelation of the contemporary world, both political and private.