Combining detailed historical research and an extremely entertaining read, Richter makes good use of and builds upon the thesis presented into the ground breaking work, Come Retribution, in which authors William A. Tidwell, James O. Hall and David Winfred Gaddy make a solid case of the involvement of the Confederate Government and its agents in the elimination of President Lincoln and his Cabinet. The cast of characters, all of them actual historical figures, move in and out of the drama surrounding the Lincoln assassination in a vast use of all the players, whether they be at center stage or in the wings. Richter does so much more than simply introduce us to new and interesting personalities; he puts flesh on the bones and writes in an honest, unapologetic, straight-forward style with an ardent feeling and understanding of the time which can only be described as intuitive as he draws us into their world. The reader walks the streets of Washington DC, Baltimore, Maryland and Richmond Virginia with the likes of John Wilkes Booth, David Herold, John H. Surratt, George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell. One also sits in on Confederate Cabinet meetings with Judah Benjamin, James Seddon and Jefferson Davis while they discuss the plan of action against Lincoln and the Federal Government; have a bourbon at the bar of the St. Lawrence Hotel in Montreal, Canada with George N. Saunders, Charles Dunham and other agents of the clandestine Confederate apparatus in Canada and sit in on secretive consultations in Mary Surratt's Washington boarding house.
