John and Abigail Adams - First Family and Patriotic Sleuth

While I was rereading the excellent bio of John Adams by David McCullough, I was overcome with the urge to reread, in tandem, the first book in Barbara Hamilton's wonderful trilogy in which wife Abigail solves heinous mysteries. I finished The Ninth Wife on the same day that I finished the John Adams bio--what a treat.

Ten Things I Love About John Adams

No question, John Adams is my favorite Founding Father. Rereading this bio, simply cemented his place in my esteem and affection.

Here are the top 11 things that I love about Adams. I simply couldn't stop at 10.

1. He was passionate about what he believed in, and he believed in the right of self-government.
2. He was loving and warm, even hot-tempered, but with the capacity to forgive and forget and acknowledge when he was wrong.
3. He was very smart and articulate and logical but also compassionate and considerate.
4. He was self-aware--he acknowledged his pride and ambition and wrestled with whether these were faults or attributes.
5. He admired, respected, and honored his father as the best of men. He knew a great many "great" men--kings, lords, politicians, statesmen, philosophers, generals, etc., but his father was the best of them all in his eyes.
6. He took every job he was given seriously and did his best and never shirked his duty, despite hardships to his physical health, his family, and his finances.
7. He loved Abigail and respected her and listened to her. She was his partner, and he was her "dearest friend."
8. Despite the lies told about him when he was in office, he never stooped to spreading slander about his political opponents.
9. He never owned any slaves and championed abolition.
10. He valued his friends and was the first to extend an olive branch when the friendship fell on hard times.
11. He had a great sense of humor, loved life, and found joy in all things great and small.

My favorite part of the book was about John's and Abigail's time in Europe--Paris before the French Revolution, the Hague, and London after the American Revolution. Crossing the Atlantic was perilous, but John made the trip many times, the first in the winter. How's that for courage!

I've had First Family, by Joseph J. Ellis on my TBR shelf for way too long, so maybe I will dive into that next. And, I would also love to read more about John Quincy Adams, John and Abigail's eldest son, and Charles Francis Adams, one of their many grandsons.

The Ninth Daughter

As a companion read to the JA bio, I decided to reread The Ninth Daughter, by Barbara Hamilton. October is a perfect month for mysteries, and this is a cracking good one and I like companion novels to dress up my nonfiction reading.

The Ninth Daughter takes place in 1773 in Boston--a young woman that the Adams have befriended is missing and a socialite is found murdered in her home. In the course of searching for her friend, Abigail solves the whodunit, showing pluck, intelligence, determination, and courage as she deals with religious fanatics (remember, the Salem witch hysteria was only 80 years earlier), misogynists, Redcoats (some of them downright decent), Patriots (including good friend Paul Revere and John's cousin Sam, leader of the Sons of Liberty), gossips, skinflints, and nosy neighbors. 

With the Boston Tea Party looming in the background, I loved reading about life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Abigail and John have four young children and just one servant to help with the massive work it takes to keep the family fed, clothed, clean, safe, and educated. The details of everyday life really brought the story to life for me. Yes, I love a good mystery, but the atmosphere, the cold and damp of the late fall in Boston, made this one especially good.

I have a lot on my reading plate at the moment, but I am considering rereading the second book in the series, A Marked Man...maybe while I read First Family.

Oh, and rewatching the excellent miniseries with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney is a no brainer!

Sup With the Devil - Abigail Adams rides again

Second book in my R.I.P. XIII reading challenge and last in Barbara Hamilton's excellent Abigail Adams mystery series was Sup With Devil.

The year is 1774, and the nervous patriots of Boston are awaiting the ship from London that will determine the fate of the city and Massachusetts Colony for the crime of dumping crates of tea into Boston Harbor the previous December.

Against this backdrop of tension, Abigail is sucked into life at Harvard College, where her erudite nephew is a scholar, and solves a murder of a student. The story involves pirates, buried treasure, prostitutes, alchemy, and a host of other delightful elements.

I absolutely adore this series, and am so sorry that I don't have another book in the series to read next October. The relationship between Abigail and husband John is simply wonderful, and I enjoy meeting other revolutionary notables such as Paul Revere, John Hancock, and the ever-maddening Sam Adams.

Hamilton gives them believable dialogue and characters, and I appreciate the details she piles on--Abigail having to do her housework (laundry, cooking, child rearing, cleaning, etc.) all while gadding off to Cambridge, Concord, Lexington, and other outlying villages around Boston.

The mystery itself is well-constructed and whodunit neatly hidden for most of the book

A thoroughly enjoyable historical mystery with one of America's leading ladies as the star.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros:

Hosted by Diane @ Bibliophile by the Sea

This is my first time doing this meme. 

My selection is from The Ninth Daughter, by Barbara Hamilton.  It's the first in her Abigail Adams mystery series, and I'm about half way through the book now.

     Abigail Adams smelled the blood before she saw the door was open.   

     In November, Boston didn't reek the way it did in summer, especially down here in Fish Street. The coppery blood-stink cut the more prosaic pong of fish-heads and privies from the moment she stepped through the gate into Tillet's Yard, the way the single thread of gore seemed to shriek at her against the gray of the wet morning, trickling down Rebecca Malvern's doorstep.

I'm really enjoying this book, and Hamilton's Abigail seems very authentic--I keep hearing and picturing Laura Linney, who played Abigail superbly in the John Adams mini-series, and who I think got it right!

Thoughts?