Murder in the Lincoln White House

Set in Washington, D.C., this uneven series launch from Gleason (Siberian Treasure) opens on the day of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration as president in March 1861. Adam Quinn, who lost an arm protecting the president-elect, is now serving as a sort of jack-of-all-trades on Lincoln’s staff. During the festivities that evening, a man is stabbed to death in a room adjacent to the ballroom in a temporary building erected for the inauguration. Since the president doesn’t want his wife, Mary, disturbed, he asks Adam to investigate quietly. Adam learns that the dead man is a banker, Custer Billings, who was arguing earlier in the evening with Hurst Lemagne, a Southerner, whose fetching daughter, Constance, was Adam’s dance partner at the ball. Gleason does a good job evoking the period with convincing detail, but she fails to make her lead, whose previous investigative experience was as an animal tracker, an impressive sleuth. Other authors have used the Civil War era as the background for a whodunit more effectively. Agent: Maura Kye-Casella, Don Congdon Associates. (Dec.)