In Murder in the Lincoln White House by C.M. Gleason, it’s Inauguration Day, 1861, and Adam Quinn is busy patrolling the Inauguration Ball in response to threats against the new President. He spies a couple suspicious people when he gets cornered by a young woman eager to dance with him. Just as Adam goes to get the Southern belle some lemonade, he gets called over urgently by Mr. Pinkerton. A local man has found the murdered body of Custer Billings, another local, and a reporter is hiding in the closet where Quinn finds the dagger belonging to the father of Quinn’s dancing partner. Chasing after the fleeing reporter, Quinn is startled to discover that Mr. Henry Altman is actually Miss Sophie Gates.
Soon Abraham Lincoln assigns the job of investigating the murder to Quinn, who finds himself entangled with both women as he works towards his goal. Assembling a motley assortment of deputies, including the two women, a free black doctor, a 12-year-old Irish boy, and even a chicken, Quinn gets closer to the solution. But then when the witness in the first murder is found stabbed in the White House itself, Quinn’s job becomes all the more urgent. He must race to locate the murderer.
I highly enjoyed getting to listen to Murder in the Lincoln White House. The book is highly compelling and has a strong plot with multiple strands that weave together to form a unified story in the end. I loved the historical details that bring to life the world of Washington, D C. on the eve of the Civil War. We see the restrictions placed upon African Americans, even free ones, as well as just how different and undeveloped the capital city was 70 years after its founding. The book drew me in and gripped me without letting me go until the final sentence.
Barry Press does an excellent job of giving this book life as he performs the audio edition. With accents that effectively depict the various regions of the U.S. represented in this book, Press makes the characters seem highly real. He works well with the original text to build up the tension and draw listeners more and more into the story.
Murder in the Lincoln White House proved to be an excellent audiobook that kept me riveted. However, it was not so dramatic that it would be classified as a thriller, a genre that does not interest me. I thought the setting fascinating and the characters easy to connect with. I highly recommend this book to any lovers of mystery or historical fiction and give it five stars.
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