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The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War
Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award–winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War.
In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America's first female private eye.
As Lincoln's train rolled inexorably toward "the seat of danger," Pinkerton struggled to unravel the ever-changing details of the murder plot, even as he contended with the intractability of Lincoln and his advisors, who refused to believe that the danger was real. With time running out Pinkerton took a desperate gamble, staking Lincoln's life - and the future of the nation - on a "perilous feint" that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. Shrouded in secrecy - and, later, mired in controversy - the story of the "Baltimore Plot" is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and Stashower has crafted this spellbinding historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a race-against-the-clock thriller.
Edgar Awards, 2014
"The book starts out slow, but once Stashower lets the Pinkerton operatives loose, their race against time as Lincoln's train speeds toward Maryland makes for an enthralling page-turner that is sure to please true crime, thriller, and history fans. Photos." - Publishers Weekly
"Stashower's character-driven narrative and lively writing style reveal the finely honed skills of an accomplished mystery writer. Recommended." - Library Journal
"The world's most famous private eye saves Abraham Lincoln's life - and perhaps the Union itself? Sounds like fiction, but in Daniel Stashower's riveting new book, it's all true. It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller." - Harlan Coben
"Reads like a first-class detective novel ... Pinkerton's tireless energy prevented a tragedy that might have destroyed the republic." - James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom
"A fast-paced page turner. Stashower deploys the skills of a gifted veteran mystery writer." - Michael Burlingame, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life
This information about The Hour of Peril was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Daniel Stashower is an acclaimed biographer and narrative historian and winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards, and the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction.
He is the author of six nonfiction works including The Hour of Peril, The Boy Genius and The Mogul as well as the Edgar Award-winning Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. He is also the author of five mystery novels, the most recent of which is The Houdini Specter.
Stashower is a recipient of The Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing, and spent a year as a Visiting Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. A freelance journalist since 1986, Stashower's articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian ...
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