David O. Stewart's historical mystery is built around the premise, some might say conspiracy theory, that John Wilkes Booth was not simply a madman bent on revenge in the name of Dixie, but was a paid operative in a plan hatched by men at the highest levels of the Confederacy - and the Union. Jamie Fraser, a small town doctor from Ohio, and Speed Cook, a former black professional baseball player turned newspaperman, embark on a journey to prove Booth's motives following a deathbed confession by former congressman John Bingham.
Fraser and Cook are an unlikely pair, and their adventures as The Lincoln Deception unfolds become increasingly unlikely (without giving anything away, I will say that the "realism" score feel off for me entirely around the time of their Baltimore steamer escapades). That said, the book does have at least one strong commonality with another Lincoln fiction, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, in that both are highly readable, if far-fetched. In fact, I read this is a single go, while sitting in an airport late last week waiting for a flight that was delayed some 8 or 10 hours. It has that going for it: you can pick it up, keep turning the pages, and a few hours later discover the story has flown by and you're about to the end of the mystery.
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