Bloody Crimes

I’ll admit, I approached *Bloody Crimes* skeptical that Swanson could make a funeral procession and a failed escape feel like edge-of-your-seat drama. But within 30 minutes, I was hooked—not by battles or speeches, but by the *logistics* of grief and flight. The Lincoln sections are haunting: Thomas’s voice cracks just slightly as he describes the president’s decomposing body being paraded like a relic, while crowds claw at the coffin. It’s grotesque, poetic, and weirdly intimate. Meanwhile, Davis’s flight is pure farce-turned-tragedy—imagine a disgraced leader fleeing in his wife’s dress, his cabinet bickering over stolen gold, all rendered with the dark humor of a Coen brothers script. That said, the audiobook isn’t flawless. Swanson’s decision to toggle between the two stories *within* chapters (rather than cleanly alternating) can feel jarring in audio form—you’re mid-sentence about Lincoln’s corpse, then suddenly dumped into a swamp with Davis’s cavalry. Thomas does his best to signal the shifts with vocal texture, but a few transitional cues (a chime, a pause) would’ve helped. And while the research is meticulous, the epilogue rushes through the aftermath, leaving some threads frustratingly loose. Still, the narration’s emotional range—from mournful to manic—makes this a standout. If you love history that *moves*, warts and all, this is your next listen.