Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Staff Review by Patricia Covley:
Manhunt reads like the most thrilling of crime novels.
President Lincoln was caught up in the excitement as most of Washington was celebrating the end of the Civil War. His plans to attend the theater were discovered by actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Booth, who had hoped to kidnap Lincoln during the war, decided this would be an excellent opportunity to assassinate the president. Additionally, Booth and his co-conspirators planned to also kill both Secretary of State Seward and Vice-President Johnson.
By the end of the evening, Lincoln was mortally wounded, Seward was critically injured and Johnson is shaken but unharmed. What followed was a manhunt unprecedented in U.S. history. Booth and co-conspirator David Herold escaped Washington into Maryland and then Virginia. They were pursued by detectives and the U.S. Cavalry.
Swanson provides a blow-by-blow account of both the flight of Booth and Herold and of the tactics used by their pursuers. In the end, Booth was shot and Herold apprehended and later hung for his part in the conspiracy.
Manhunt is a terrific read for anyone who has a passion for history or who loves an exciting story. I found it a difficult book to put down.
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