Thriller writer inspires children with stories of American heroes

by Matthew Pitman

Brad Meltzer knows a few things about heroes. He has written very entertaining books and comics featuring fictional super heroes. For the first time he has published two childrens’ books about the real-life American heroes Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln.

In his book  I Am Amelia Earhart, Meltzer describes Earhart’s childhood and her career in aviation. When she was young, Amelia acted very unlady-like by the standards of the of the early 1900s. For example, she refused to play with dolls and wear dresses. Instead, she built miniature roller coasters and day-dreamed about flying.

As Amelia gets older, Meltzer describes the aviation records that she broke. She was the first woman pilot to reach the highest altitude ever recorded by flying to 14,000 feet.

Some memorable quotes that Earhart is known for are, “Never interrupt someone who is doing what you said could not be done,” and “I know no bounds.” These words are inspiring because they encourage kids to not limit themselves.

Clearly, Meltzer’s theme is to chase your dreams no matter what gets in your way. He lets kids know that dreams are not just for adults.

Illustrator Christopher Eliopoulos does a good job of making Earhart look like a little kid throughout the story which connects young readers to her and her accomplishments.

Children from kinder to third grade would enjoy this book because of its fun pictures, interesting facts, and easy to comprehend language.

Meltzer delivers another fun everyday hero story with I Am Abraham Lincoln.

When Abraham Lincoln was young he could not stop reading. He would even lie to his parents and say he was working in the corn field when he was really reading. He continued attending school even after most kids his age had stopped going.  Although he was bullied in school, he never stopped being himself.

When Lincoln got older, he put his reading to good use and became president. He had always been unhappy about slavery, and so during the Civil War he freed the slaves. And out of respect, some of the slaves came and fought for the Union.

Lincoln’s most important lesson was about equality of all people. He said, in his most famous speech at Gettysburg, “All men are created equal,” giving the people of the Union the confidence to win the war.  Meltzer shows that Lincoln’s greatest lesson is to fight for what you believe in, whether it is freeing a turtle or freeing the slaves. Lincoln is a great example of how far loving to read can take you.

The illustrations by Christopher Eliopoulos are fun, but because Lincoln is shown in a suit and a beard even as a child, it struck me as a little odd. Just like in “I Am Amelia Earhart,” the illustrations do a good job of making the story easy to read and understand because the pictures are so closely related to the story.

Children will enjoy these inspirational books. Meltzer plans to write four more childrens' books about heroes. 

The CIA protects the president . . . the Culper Ring protects the presidency

“. . .suddenly the bullet dropped out through my fingers and fell, breaking the solemn silence of the room with its clatter, into an empty basin that was standing beneath. There it lay upon the white china, a little black mass no bigger that the end of my finger—dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world’s history as we may perhaps never realize.”


Those are the words of Dr. Edward Curtis, the physician who performed the autopsy of President Abraham Lincoln.

Every president since James Madison has attended religious services at St. John’s church, a house of worship that sits directly across the street from the White House. When the rector is murdered, Secret Service agents question archivist Beecher White because his name and telephone number have been discovered in the pocket of the suspect, along with a nineteenth-century deck of playing cards. In an effort to clear his name, Beecher and his sidekick, Tot, along with other members of the Culper Ring, jump into the fray only to discover that the prime suspect is one of Beecher’s childhood pals, Marshall Lusk, from Sagamore, Wisconsin.

While investigating the rector’s murder, Beecher finds a peephole in a wall of the church that directs his eye to President Abraham Lincoln’s pew. Coupled with the fact that the rector was murdered with a forty-four caliber, single-shot Derringer pistol, the identical weapon that John Wilkes Booth used to kill President Lincoln, Beecher concludes that the murder is a re-creation of Lincoln’s assassination. Beecher also discovers that the ace of spades is missing from the deck of cards belonging to the alleged killer.

The following morning Pastor Kenneth Frick, leader of the Foundry Church, located a scant mile from the White House, is shot twice in the back. When Beecher and Tot put together the evidence, they are convinced that the attempted murder of Frick was a meticulous re-creation of President Garfield’s assassination by Charles Guiteau in 1881. Beecher and Tot learn that Guiteau had a tattoo of a dagger with a red diamond on it. “Two presidential killers,” Beecher concludes. “Two suits of playing cards.”

Because the current president of the United States, Orson Wallace, had attended services at both St. John’s and the Foundry churches, Beecher and Tot believe that he is the common link to the murders of both pastors and speculate that Wallace is the killer’s ultimate target. Would Wallace’s assassination, like Lincoln’s, foist “mighty changes in the world’s history?”

After assassination re-enactments of presidents McKinley and Kennedy, the novel’s twists and turns take the reader over the edge into an accurately depicted but largely unknown presidential hideaway where secrets are born and honor dies. 

In his latest thriller, The Fifth Assassin,  Brad Meltzer entwines the past with the present through the use of flashbacks to Beecher’s childhood and gradually reveals the lurid backstory that drives Beecher and his childhood friends through a web of political ruthlessness, misplaced loyalties, and ultimate betrayals. As the story builds to a critical mass, Beecher must resolve his contradictory feelings in order to preserve his code of honor.

Meltzer is a student of history and this novel unfolds within an accurate historical context. He brings back familiar characters from The Book of Fate and The Inner Circle, probing their psyches and exposing their inner conflicts, and giving the reader a multi-dimensional insight into their foibles and motivations. His characters are authentic and credible and they beg for a series of novels based upon the Culper Ring. There is never a dull moment and the suspense builds with the turn of each page. The Fifth Assassin is great storytelling, brilliantly executed.