The Eye That Never Sleeps: How Detective Pinkerton Saved President Lincoln by Marissa Moss (review)

Before John Wilkes Booth discharged the fatal bullet that ended the life of Abraham Lincoln, there were other plotters with the same goal. Fortunately, there was also Allan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant whose chance apprehension of counterfeiters led to his establishment of a detective agency and who would be called upon to apply his thoroughly modern methods to foil an assassination attempt planned for Lincoln's inaugural train journey from Illinois to Washington, D.C. After addressing Pinkerton's early years in Scotland and Chicago, Moss turns to the plans of the would-be perpetrators and the intricate countermeasures devised by Pinkerton and implemented largely by his operative Kate Warne, the nation's first female detective. Lies were told, trains were rerouted, the President-elect was disguised and crammed into a far-too-short sleeper berth, Lincoln's life was saved, and the first iteration of the Secret Service would soon be born. As Moss's narration unwinds, Holmes offers engrossing digital scratchboard illustrations and period-inspired typeface that imbue the deadly serious action with more than a touch of drollery. Dusty mauves, violets, and browns dominate, while doll-like characters enact the narrowly averted tragedy on tidy sets, in cutaway train-car views, or spotlighted in the broad golden beams that emanate from Pinkerton's own keenly observant eyes. The visual style may differ, but there's a literary kinship with Pizzoli's Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower (BCCB 4/15) in the blend of information and delight. A timeline, author and artist notes, quotations notes, bibliography, and an index make this the real deal for history enthusiasts. EB