ON SECRET SERVICE by John Jakes
Signet/New American Library - April 2001
ISBN: 0451204050 - Paperback
 Historical

Reviewed by Beverly J. Rowe, MyShelf.com
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Nobody does history like John Jakes. In this book he takes us back to the Civil War, in the tumultuous time before Lincoln's assassination and tells us of the formation of the Union Army's Secret Service. The story follows two couples through the torment of forbidden love and a nation at war.

Lon Price is an up-and-coming agent working for Allen Pinkerton, who contracts with the Union to provide a Secret Service. He is completely mesmerized by Margaret Miller, a Confederate sympathizer and friend of the notorious Rose O'Neal Greenham who is involved with the Knights of Liberty, a Confederate spy ring. Margaret manages to get arrested and put into a Union Prison along with a number of Confederate spies. Hanna is an adventurous actress and Union sympathizer. She dresses like a man to follow the army south where she is captured by the Rebels, and then rescued by the handsome Confederate Second Lieutenant Fred Dasher, who manages to steal her heart.

Jakes' characters are fully developed and sympathetic. Exciting nonstop action that follows history accurately and portrays some of the real people who were prominent then. All the Civil War Generals are there along with John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln. You will bite your nails, laugh and cry, but you won't put it down until the very last page.
 
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