Novel---The First Assasin: Fire Eaters Hire Professional Killer To Deal With Lincoln

The First Assassin, John J. Miller, Amazon Encore Publishing, 450 pp., 2010, $14.95.

Set in Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Charleston, S.C., The First Assassin is a fast paced, tightly knit, speculative story of a murder attempt on Lincoln immediately after the Baltimore Plot of January and February 1861. South Carolinian planter Langston Bennett, hires the assassin. Mazorca, Latin American para-military sociopath, is aided by Violet Grenier, a Washington, D.C. socialite and Southern sympathizer.

In their way is Portia, a slave on Bennett's plantation and Rook, an aide to Winfield Scott, commander of all Federal forces. Portia's mission is to escape from Charleston and deliver the assassin's photograph to President Lincoln. Rook is knowing that the Baltimore plot was the first attempt but may not be the last of the attempts that will be made on Lincoln.

Miller's novel is of two worlds. He has done his background reading in Lincoln's life, wartime Washington D.C., and slave plantations. He also appears to be quite immersed in the past decade's 'political thriller' and detective novels. The First Assassin's pace is fast and it's characters tend to be a bit over-the-top. Historic in details, thrilling in pace, and driven by a modern sensibility, The First Assassin will most likely be found in stores in the mystery-detection-thriller shelves and not on the historical fiction shelves.

Image Source: First Assassin

Novel---Seen the Glory: A Novel of The Battle of Gettysburg

Seen the Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, John Hough Jr., Simon & Schuster, 432 pp., $25.00.

Hough manages to balance a front rank story and and a home front story. Characters such as young soldiers from Martha's Vineyard Massachusetts, runaway slaves, and freedmen in Adams County Pennsylvania are well developed but at times seem to move to the dictates of the plot and not of their own will. Blending civilian and military history, Hough writes with a novelist's drive. Luke and Thomas Chandler enlist as privates in the 20th Massachusetts Regiment and leave their father with a black female servant who is assaulted by Vineyard roughs.

Exhaustion, hunger, illness are endured by the Chambers brothers whose relationship is strained due to a secret love affair with the black servant and visits to 'soiled doves' in Virginia. Generally accurate in most military details, Hough pushes the likely limits of accuracy in race relations, black resistance, and the Army of Northern Virginia in its Pennsylvania Campaign. Seen the Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg is unlike Killer Angels. Shaara's work is more like Hemingway's (Old Man and the Sea), Foote's (Shiloh)and Crane's (Red Badge of Courage)naturalism and reticence of language. Hough's work is more effusive in descriptive language and more complex in using family and community relations.

Is Seen The Glory a novel of the Battle of Gettysburg. No. The climaxes occur at the battlefield and the battlefield park. What convinced CWL to make the purchase was not the backcover blurbs of James M. McPherson (blurb meister)or Scott Hartwig (well appreciated GNMP ranger) but Lee Smith a fine contemporary Southern author. Coming to it as a novel set in the Civil War, CWL finished Seen The Glory satisfied.