12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Where was the judge he had never seen? ", June 24, 2011
Franz Kafka, The Trial
David Stacton's "The Judges of the Secret Court" is one of the finest pieces of historical fiction I've read in a long time. Originally published in 1961 and newly resurrected by NYRB Classics, "Secret Court" takes a look at one of the most traumatic events in American history, the assassination of President Lincoln at the end of the Civil War with such attention to detail that I sometimes wondered whether this was a work of fiction or not.
The story opens in Edwin Booth's (the assassin's brother) Gramercy Park, New York City apartment in 1892, a year before his death. Recently retired from a stage career in which he was acclaimed as the great Shakespearean actor of his time, he is reading a manuscript sent to him by an aspiring playwright. It is a piece of fluff, "pish-tush" in Edwin's words. But he is struck by the title, "Judges of the Secret Court" and the title sends him on a sort of melancholy reverie, the sort where an old man's life may be said to flash before he eyes. And from there the heart of the story begins.
The reader is immediately taken back to April 14, 1865, the day Lincoln was shot. From there the story takes up very quickly through the assassination to Booth's flight and eventual death while being captured. The last third of the book takes the reader into the military tribunal where the trial of Booth's alleged co-conspirators. The book closes back in Edwin's Gramercy Park apartment.
There are a number of reasons why this book stands out for me as a great find. First, there is Stacton's attention to detail. Although a piece of fiction the picture Stacton paints of D.C. and the areas mentioned in John Wilkes Booth's flight from D.C. seem remarkably detailed and accurate. I am reading, as a companion piece to this book, Margaret Leech's Pulitzer Prize winning history of civil-war era DC
Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865 (New York Review Books Classics) and Stacton's fictional description of D.C. and its inhabitants tracks Leech's historical account in every critical way. Stacton's writing is vivid without being florid and I felt as if I could almost see the dust bowls or muddy streets, smell the stench of overflowing drainage canals or be wary of the unsavory types that wandered through the streets.
Similarly, Stacton's characterizations of the players in this drama struck me as dead-solid perfect. Except for the playwright who submitted the manuscript to Edwin that serves as the entry point for the novel, all of the characters in Secret Court are real. Stacton goes for `straight history' here and creates a compelling narrative here not by introducing fictional characters to bounce off the real characters but by vesting these real figures with voices that drive the story. Stacton accomplishes this by speaking in the first person, or revealing the interior thoughts of all the characters in this drama. In the wrong hands this could result in dreadful, self-important prose but Stacton's language is so precise that the use of this overarching perspective works wonderfully. Last, Stacton's ability to sum up a character, be it one of the Booths, Mary Surratt, Dr. Mudd, Secretary of War Stanton, or Vice President Johnson, in a sentence or two as they enter the `drama' really set up everything that flowed from that character in the book.
The last third of the book, the trial of Booth's co-conspirators and everyone else swept up by Stanton in the aftermath of the assassination, had contemporary resonances for me that I don't think Stacton could have foreseen when he wrote the book. The assassination was a tragic event that had an undeniably seismic impact on American life and politics. In the traumatic days that followed Stanton declared martial law, arrested every actor in Ford's Theatre and everyone else he could get his hands on and prepared them for a military trial. Habeas corpus remained suspended and the prisoners were kept isolated in cells, bound and with burlap bags over their heads so they could not talk or otherwise communicate with everyone. The trial was handled in many respects like Stalin's famed show trials of the 1930s. As one of the judges is heard to say, "[t]he way to show innocence in this world, is to prove someone else guilty, and they had their orders and would obey them." I would not argue if any reader sees a parallel to events in the U.S. over the last ten years. As Edwin Booth says in his reverie, we may all be guilty or even innocent, but "who can prove it? For in fact no man is innocent at that bar. He is always accessory, willy-nilly, before or after some fact." As Edwin comes out of his reverie he notes that "there is no guilt in this world, yet somehow life makes us culpable. That is the meaning of the Judges of the Secret Court. No matter what we do, they are always there."
David Stacton's "Judges of the Secret Court" is a special book. Highly recommended.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best historical novels you can find, July 8, 2011
This review is from: The Judges of the Secret Court: A Novel About John Wilkes Booth (New York Review Books Classics) (Kindle Edition)
WOW! Thank you New York Review for bringing this book to light. I have not heard of David Stacton before but this is one of the better historical novels I have read. Stacton is very concise detailing the actions of a multitude of characters during the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination and getting it all done in under 300 pages. Stacton's prose is very contemporary rather than the more antiquated style of most historical novelists making this a very refreshing read. I don't give out many 5 star reviews anywhere but this novel really stuck with me. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the effect Lincoln's assassination had on people of that time.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A stilted yet interesting book, August 3, 2011
This was an interesting read, telling the tale of Lincoln's assassination from the viewpoint of John Wilkes Booth and his brother Edwin. The detail was good, though the prose was very convoluted and difficult to follow. Overall this is a qualified recommendation -- it held interest but could have been much better.
Also, skip the forward by Crowley. His observations on Stracton are hagiographical, and his desire to draw modern parallels with the book he reviews are fatuous at best.
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