Blending Abraham Lincoln’s haunted presidency and Harry Houdini’s crusade against spiritualism, Brad Ricca --- the author of the Edgar Award-nominated MRS. SHERLOCK HOLMES, TRUE RAIDERS, OLIVE THE LIONHEART and SUPER BOYS --- introduces this well-researched and enchanting mix of history and social commentary, set against a snazzy Jazz Age backdrop. It is refreshing to read historical fact, unbiased opinion and social influence in a period piece, far removed from the blood, guts and gore of contemporary thrillers.

Americanized to Eric Weiss, Erich Weisz at age four moved from Budapest in 1878 to Wisconsin. In 1890, he changed his moniker after reading French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin’s autobiography. Although spiritualism’s birth was in 1848 New York, when the Fox sisters reported conversing with a spirit through mysterious sounds, the movement spread through France like a plague, thus séance.

"Blending Abraham Lincoln’s haunted presidency and Harry Houdini’s crusade against spiritualism, Brad Ricca...introduces this well-researched and enchanting mix of history and social commentary, set against a snazzy Jazz Age backdrop."

Houdini was the star antagonist during the 1926 congressional hearings regarding spiritualism and “fraud mediums, those who prey on the gullible.” He honed in on Madame Marcia, fortune teller for the capital’s rich and powerful, whose clients included Supreme Court justices, congressmen and First Lady Florence Harding. His passionate presentation to legislators included “The Ouija board is the first step towards an insane asylum” and “Mediums are either deluded or deluding…mediums are liars.” Proponents argued that spiritualism was a religion protected by the Constitution, but antagonists claimed systemic financial exploitation. Even famed SHERLOCK HOLMES author Arthur Conan Doyle and Houdini “had once been close friends, but Spiritualism had divided them, and bitterly so.”

Houdini’s bunco squad included Rose Mackenberg, amateur sleuth supreme, who recorded dollar bill serial numbers as evidence that she paid mediums and fortune tellers. Of a thousand alleged spiritualists, all were artifices. She and other Houdini investigators cast a far-reaching web to snare fraudsters. Those include claims that John Wilkes Booth escaped and lived in the Texas Nutt House Hotel, and Lord Camarvon, who allegedly died from a Tutankhamun curse, passed from sepsis caused by shaving over a mosquito bite.

The titular ghost does not make an appearance, as the factitious mediums and spiritualists are unable to conjure a spirit at the congressional hearings to ascertain authenticity, but credible officials claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a believer. Mary Todd Lincoln consulted mediums and saw the spirit of her dead son, but the last surviving Lincoln, Robert, had her committed to an institution. Houdini’s “research into Lincoln, Booth, and the mysterious role of Spiritualism in several presidencies and assassinations seemed to build a ghostly framework of a future that might be repeated.” Thus the odd parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy.

As the committee hearings ended, clairvoyant fortune teller Madame Marcia, who predicted the deaths of presidents Harding and Wilson, told Houdini, “When November comes around and the license comes due, you won’t be here. You’ll be dead.” Master Magician Houdini died on Halloween 1926 of peritonitis, an abdominal infection.

LINCOLN’S GHOST is a high-octane dissection of magic versus mediums, the afterlife, and one person’s pursuit of educating D.C.’s elite about their delusional misconceptions.