Lincoln’s Assassin
Subtitled “The Unsolicited Confessions of J. Wilkes Booth”, this book is interesting but not involving. It weaves known facts concerning the assassination of President Lincoln together with modern conspiracy theories and a sweet fiction. It concerns the story of John Wilkes Booth; he was happy to know that officially he was dead, shot against orders by a Union soldier. That he was betrayed by someone who engaged him, subtly, to carry out the assassination is the thing that shakes him from his country hideaway. Booth is, if nothing else, an egoist. What this book attempts is to flesh out the personality of one of history’s most notorious assassins. Told in the first person, the novel flits from a plain narrative of Booth’s search for his betrayer, to internalised conflicts in his personality, to memories which build a picture of why he did what he did. It could be seen as filling in gaps in our knowledge, but it is based only on supposition. Somewhat disjointed but quite interesting in its theories, as told by the killer himself.
