Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
April 1865, the American Civil war is grinding to its brutal end and scores are being settled between former allies of convenience as much as between those on the Union and Confederate sides of the wire. The stakes could not be higher with the future political direction of a superpower in waiting hanging in the balance.
Hired by an engineering company keen to profit from reconstruction Major Findo Gask and his friend Errol Rait are sent to Washington to negotiate a contract. They find themselves at the centre of the dramatic events surrounding the assassination of President Lincoln and the hunt for and trial of the conspirators responsible.
In the fourth instalment of his popular series featuring Major Gask David Cairns delivers another first-rate historical thriller. He draws on real events to give a picture of the fevered days leading up to and following the assassination, exposing political machinations within the Lincoln administration matching those of the handful of conspirators seeking to strike one last blow for their lost cause.
His attention to detail is meticulous and he captures the fevered atmosphere following the events at Ford’s Theatre as the authorities state a poorly executed manhunt ending in the, convenient for some senior figures, death of John Wilkes-Booth. This is made all the more interesting thanks to the inclusion of real individuals who are seldom presented in the flattering light they might have hoped history might shine on them.
There are, as Cairns would probably be the first to say, as many questions and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of Lincoln in 1865 as there are that of Kennedy almost a century later. This book explores the events that inspired them with a genuine feeling for the spirit of the times and, maybe, suggests some unsettling answers.
