From Barnes & Noble
The topic of Jim Lehrer's 13th novel is a crime scene investigation, but this is not your average CSI mystery. The victim wasn't exactly murdered; he was executed; and he didn't die recently; he succumbed over a century ago on a great American battlefield. In the hands of the PBS anchor, the case of the anomalous Antietam skeleton becomes an exploration into individual character and national identity.
Publishers Weekly
In his 13th novel, PBS NewsHour anchor Lehrer delivers a clever forensic mystery. This effort does not quite pack the emotional and dramatic wallop of his last book, The Special Prisoner, but it does raise powerful questions about the ethics of whitewashing historical truths. Dr. Don Spaniel is an archeologist with the National Park Service. He is puzzled by an unusual grave discovered at the Civil War battlefield in Antietam,, Md., site of the single bloodiest day of fighting in America's military history. The skeletal remains of a Union officer reveal that the victim had been executed. While trying to identify the dead officer, Spaniel learns that the name on his I.D. tag is that of a man buried as a local hero back in his Connecticut hometown after the war. Who, then, is this unfortunate soul, and why was he wearing another man's identity tag? And why was he murdered? As Spaniel uses sophisticated, high-tech forensic equipment and procedures in his investigation, a 100-year-old written confession surfaces in an Iowa historical archive, and Spaniel suddenly realizes the magnitude of the mystery. What he doesn't grasp, however, is that the descendants of the Civil War veterans are just as passionate about honor today as their great-great-grandfathers were in 1862. Spaniel's professional fervor, and his ultimate decision about whether to disclose the truth, could have unintended, tragic results. Lehrer's style is fluid and fast moving; he skillfully develops suspense surrounding a compelling ethical dilemma. Agent, Tim Seldes. (Aug. 27) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
KLIATT
It's easy to recommend this historical mystery. The pace is brisk, the plot; centered around a body dug up on a Civil War battlefield; is interesting, and the author gives us a good dose of history and historical prose style to enjoy. Despite the paper-thin characterizations and some awkward attempts to show the effect of the past on the present, the central mystery holds the reader's attention: Who was shot, execution-style, and buried just yards from Burnside Bridge and Antietam Creek? Our detective is Don Spaniel, a workaholic archeologist for the National Park Service, and his main clues are the contents of the grave and an incendiary document he tracks down in Iowa. In the course of his investigation, Don and the reader learn, sometimes in horrifying detail, the story of the 1862 charge on Burnside Bridge that resulted in more than 20,000 casualties. In one particularly gruesome passage Don imagines the village church when it was a field hospital, sees the saws grinding through flesh and bone, and hears the screams. The mystery of the body is, of course, solved, but, in a somewhat ambiguous ending, the attempt to suppress the full story results in one last death. The main character, however admirable, is a company man and goes along with the cover-up. Perhaps the author's theme is that we must accept the truth as best we know it, that honest history is our best guide to who we are. KLIATT Codes: JSA;Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Random House, 222p. map., Healy
Library Journal
When two Civil War relic hunters stumble upon human remains on a hill overlooking Antietam Creek, National Park Service archaeologist Dr. Don Spaniel is called in to excavate. This novel follows Spaniel's quest for the truth and the consequences of his decision to reveal his discoveries. Spaniel employs the help of a forensic anthropologist, a retired army colonel and Civil War history buff, the Army War College, and various historical societies in solving the mystery. Excerpts from the fictional journal of Union soldier Albert Randolph are interspersed throughout, along with detailed snippets from actual archived materials, giving the novel the fullness and flavor of historical fiction. Though focused on fictional characters both past and present, this novel provides a considerable amount of history incidental to Civil War military life, especially at Antietam, in addition to being a very entertaining story. Though Antietam is the subject of various adult and juvenile fiction, most notably Bernard Cornwell's The Bloody Ground, this latest effort by news commentator/author Lehrer (The Special Prisoner) is recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/02.] - Jean Langlais, St. Charles P.L., IL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Public TV worthy and sometime novelist Lehrer (The Special Prisoner, 2000, etc.) invents and solves a crime committed at the battle of Antietam. Bureaucrats and Civil War reenactors are at the faintly beating heart of a story that cuts back and forth soberly between the diary of a Union sergeant and the workdays of a-there is no other way to put this-geeky (six foot eight, unpleasantly thin, and girlfriend-less for decades) government archaeologist trying to put a name on a newly discovered skeleton near Sharpsburg and Antietam Creek in Maryland, scene of one of the war's most vicious and devastating battles. Don Spaniel, the government's man of science, is on the scene as dirt is brushed away from the bones in an unmarked grave, revealing various oddities. For one thing, the soldier is face down. And he seems to have been shot through the back of the skull, perhaps by the Colt revolver that set off the metal detector wielded by the skeleton's discoverer. And maybe his hands were bound. Was he executed by the Rebs? Dr. Spaniel is able to draw on the many experts he's come to know in his National Park Service tenure, and clue by clue, expert by expert, he gradually learns that the bones once belonged to Kenneth Allbritten, an officer in the Eleventh Connecticut Volunteer Regiment, an outfit ordered by the criminally stupid Union General Ambrose Burnside to take and cross a stone bridge over Antietam Creek, exposing the men to murderous gunfire from the well-entrenched rebel forces on the opposite bank. Lehrer lets us know what Spaniel will learn through the diary entries of Albert Randolph, one of two chums recruited from his hometown by the valiant, perhaps too-valiant, LieutenantAllbritten. On his way to the solution, Spaniel tries on, and is eerily possessed by, Union Army drag, visits the soldiers' hometown, has a spooky fleeting contact with an Iowan, and sounds, in his spoken cadences, strangely like an iconic newscaster. Overreverent and, despite a shocking ending, largely inert.
