The Blood of Renegades

July 22, 2013
Set in 1900, this impressive debut novel from historian Stewart (American Emperor) opens with Jamie Fraser, an Ohio country doctor, agonizing over the cryptic deathbed revelation of 85-year-old John Bingham, the respected statesman who tried the conspirators in the 16th president’s murder: Mary Surratt, an accomplice to assassin John Wilkes Booth, privately confessed to Bingham a secret that threatened “the survival of the republic.” Along with Speed Cook, a black ex-baseball player and aspiring newspaperman, Fraser obsesses over parsing this secret, which could reveal a conspiracy that reaches beyond Booth to the higher powers of the Union and the Confederacy. Traversing New York City, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., the amateur sleuths confront henchmen of the shadowy Sons of Liberty, racist mobs, and powerful financiers, whose cotton-trading connections are somehow tied to the fateful night at Ford’s Theater. Eschewing the wild fantasies of many conspiracy thrillers, Stewart constructs a plausible version of history that works as both fiction and speculative inquiry. Agent: Will Lippincott, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin.

September 1, 2013

Physician Jamie Fraser is stunned when his dying patient, John Bingham, the lead prosecutor for the Lincoln assassination trials, confesses that there was more to the Lincoln case than was ever revealed. John alludes to an evil force that would have threatened the nation's survival. Later, Jamie searches through John's letters and papers for evidence to bolster that tantalizing possibility. Meanwhile, Speed Cook, a confident and college-educated black man who dreams of publishing his own newspaper, strolls into Jamie's life. He, too, feels compelled to learn more about this mystery. Jamie and Speed forge an uneasy alliance fortified by subsequent battles and close calls with assorted bad guys as they pursue false leads and uncover surprising new facts in Baltimore, New York, and Washington, DC. VERDICT Historian Stewart's (Impeached; American Emperor) debut novel, set in 1900, is dense with detail and intrigue, making a hearty read for conspiracy addicts.

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