The Murder of Andrew Johnson (The John Hay Mysteries, 3)
Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States, dies of a stroke (known then as apoplexy) on July 31, 1875. This historical novel imagines that his final illness disguises a more sinister method of death for one of the most hated men in America.
Journalist John Hay is asked by the editor of the New York Herald to report on Johnson’s funeral. Hay was Lincoln’s private secretary and recommended that Johnson replace Hannibal Hamlin as vice president for Lincoln’s second term, arguing that with the Civil War nearly won, a Southerner might help unite the country better than someone from Maine. Yet upon Lincoln’s assassination, the country could not have been in worse hands: Johnson bungled Reconstruction, made enemies of most politicians, and had been impeached.
Using his Washington connections, Hay follows a trail of clues—a not-so-loving family, conflicting reports from the two doctors who attended the patient, and potential blackmail letters—all the way back to the failed assassination attempt on Johnson in April 1865. Most damning is that one of those doctors was in the pocket of the private secretary to President Ulysses S. Grant.
Solomon is a master wordsmith, creating a genuinely likable protagonist who uses his vast experience and skills to conduct a competent amateur investigation (even if he does borrow Allan Pinkerton to assist). You feel the uneasiness of the South after Reconstruction and the oppressive heat of the Capitol in August. Perhaps the former president was murdered after all.
