The Crime Of The Century

Manhunt:
The 12-day Chase For Lincoln's Killer
By James L. Swanson
2006, Harper-Collins Publisher
ISBN 13:978-0-06-051849-3
448 pp with illustrations
$26.95

The events of the night of April 14, 1865 are indelibly inked into the pages American History. The Civil War, the bloodiest four years the country had ever witnessed is now at an end, and there is cause for celebration in the streets of Washington, indeed all over the Union. Save for one man, John Wilkes Booth.

Any student of history today can tell you that on that night in question, John Wilkes Booth, the famed actor crept into the Presidential box at Ford's Theater, aimed his derringer at the head of Abraham Lincoln and pulled the trigger and with one bullet, changed the course of history.

What is little known about are the 12 days it took the Federal Government to track down and find Booth as he fled through Maryland and ultimately into Virginia where he died after being shot by a Union officer while hiding in a tobacco barn on the farm of Richard Garret.

In this riveting tale, James Swanson gives the reader an thrilling in-depth look at those twelve days, and never misses a beat in retelling this amazing story that may seem too good be true but is.

We are there while Booth and his accomplices plot and scheme in the days and hours before the murders. We smell the gunpowder and hear the report of the Derringer and the cries from Mary Todd Lincoln. We can hear the bone breaking in Booth's left leg as he jumps from the presidential box and yells out before fleeing backstage to his waiting horse. We are also there at the residence of bedridden Secretary of State William Seward and we're given the frightening and bloody account of his near murder at the hands of Booth's accomplice Lewis Powell.

On the lamb,we watch as Booth flees Washington D.C. the night of the killing, we follow him into Maryland and feel his sense of pride at killing the president. We feel the pain of his injured left leg which will ultimately prove to be his downfall. We watch as he and his associate David Herold are forced to hide out in a thicket for five excruciating days before making the crossing of the Potomac into Virginia and his inevitable date with destiny.

Over the one hundred plus year since that fateful evening, there have been many conspiracy theories as to whether Booth survived his ordeal and lived on, only to die years later. Later these stories became the basis for the 1977 movie "The Lincoln Conspiracy". Here Swanson is in fantastic form, as he describes in detail, Booth's last and final moments on Earth and what happened to his body after being brought back to Washington which ultimately put's to rest any of the stories of his survival.

Although the author reminds the reader several times of past events in the chapters preceding, which has a tendency to be redundant, it doesn't detract too much from the overall sense of drama, and pulse racing excitement as the events unfold and the chase gathers momentum and rushes us into it's thrilling end.
Overall the book is a great read for anyone who enjoys Civil War history, and a book that is hard to put down once it's begun.