Synopsis
In 1809, Meriwether Lewis, now Louisiana Territory governor, dies mysteriously at an inn, leading his friends, ornithologist Alexander Wilson, and Harrison Hull, an Army captain, to investigate
Reviews
Using fiction to examine real-life questions surrounding the 1809 death of the noted politician and explorer (one-half of Lewis & Clark), Burns ( Roman Nights ) comes up with a plausible solution to the mystery of what one character describes as "the only two-shot suicide in history." Lewis, governor of the Territory of Upper Louisiana, supposedly killed himself in Grinder's Stand, Tenn., but two of his friends, naturalists Harrison Hull and Alexander Wilson, are convinced that he was murdered and set out to prove it. In Grinder's Stand they hear new accounts of Lewis's death that support their hunch. When they reach the territorial capital of St. Louis, they discover that men who know too much about their friend's past are likely to end up dead themselves. Among the historical suspects the author fingers are Frederick Bates, Lewis's power-hungry successor to the office of governor, and General James Wilkinson, an associate of Aaron Burr. Intricate layers of wrongdoing in the period's wide-open fur trade provide a possible motive. This elegant, slim mystery satisfies modern expectations of conspiracy in the highest places of power.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
According to the history books, Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) was shot to death at a Tennessee tavern on his way to Washington to protest the post-Jefferson government's failure to honor his expense vouchers. Here, historical novelist Burns (Roman Nights, Roman Shadows) attributes the case for suicide to three wildly disparate accounts that Betsy Grinder, the tavernkeeper's wife, gave to Major James Neelly--and sets out real-life ornithologist Alexander Wilson, a friend of Lewis's, and foppish fictional narrator Captain Harrison Hull to unearth the truth. Both in Tennessee and in St. Louis, Wilson and Hull find a miasma of political chicanery, lies, and intrigue just as thick as you'd expect from a modern political murder, and they predictably tie Lewis's death into the moneyed double-dealing of the Missouri Fur Company. And that's not all: there'll be time out, too, for some anti-slavery gentility and the War of 1812. Lively and readable, but overlong (even at its length), and not unusually compelling. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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