The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War

Written by Daniel Stashower

Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

"It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller." —Harlan Coben

Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award–winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War.

In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America's first female private eye.

As Lincoln's train rolled inexorably toward "the seat of danger," Pinkerton struggled to unravel the ever-changing details of the murder plot, even as he contended with the intractability of Lincoln and his advisors, who refused to believe that the danger was real. With time running out Pinkerton took a desperate gamble, staking Lincoln's life—and the future of the nation—on a "perilous feint" that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. Shrouded in secrecy—and, later, mired in controversy—the story of the "Baltimore Plot" is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and with The Hour of Peril Stashower has crafted a spellbinding historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a race-against-the-clock thriller.
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013

Winner of the 2014 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781427229243

Daniel Stashower

Daniel Stashower is an acclaimed biographer and narrative historian and winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards, as well as the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, AARP: The Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, and American History as well as other publications. His books include The Hour of Peril, Teller of Tales, and The Beautiful Cigar Girl.

Reviews for The Hour of Peril

[ronrose1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book reads like a good suspense thriller. Even though we know the plot to kill Lincoln at this time will not be successful, we can't help making comparisons with the later successful assassination. The research that went into this book is well evidenced in the detail of this easily overlooked footnote in history. The coming events of the Civil War and Lincoln's eventual assassination in 1865 would largely remove this incident to a side track of history. We owe much of the thanks for preserving the details of this incident to the remarkable work of Allen Pinkerton and his agents. They performed much of the undercover field work that revealed the plots to kill President elect Lincoln. The author gives Pinkerton much of the credit. He also acknowledges, however, that other independent investigations were going on to try to ascertain the degree of threat to Lincoln as he traveled through Baltimore, whose populace largely sided with the pro-secessionists of the deep South. Many threats were voiced that Lincoln would not be allowed to proceed to Washington to take the oath of office. A good overview of Pinkerton, his skilled agents and the history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency adds greatly to the the book. The author is thorough in his research and doesn't fail to give opposing views of the events that were to transpire. Book provided by Amazon Vine.