The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy by Jacopo della Quercia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Smart, funny, crazy, and fast paced. A mixture of fantasy and historical reality with a fantastic cast of characters, President Taft and all his heft at the center. I can’t even explain all the wonderful elements at work here because some things would be considered spoilers. Here’s a few early tidbits that should get you engaged enough to snag a copy of this book:
--Taft’s first appearance is in an underground boxing club.
--Taft and his entourage fly around in a zeppelin that’s supposed to be top secret but he flies it to a baseball game so he can throw out the first pitch.
--an automaton goes crazy in the White House
--Lots of insults tossed at Thomas Edison; Nikola Tesla is one of the presidents supporters and supplies him with a variety of gadgets that gives this novel its steam-punk-isn flair.
--Great time period offers up plenty of cool “I didn’t know that” facts (many footnoted). The stuff that’s fiction is, of course, most fun, but the reality of some of the politics of Taft’s presidency and the pre-WWI era are fun (JP Morgan, Russian relations, Roosevelt, and more).
--Robert Todd Lincoln as the brooding sidekick to Taft is a really interesting pairing.
--plenty of intrigue, and a few twists but nothing that will make you say “Oh, COME ON!”
I honestly found this book to be so much fun and so smart and funny that I want everyone to read it just so we can talk about how it could be an amazing movie.
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