cover image Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Seth Grahame-Smith, read by Scott Holst, Hachette Audio, unabridged, nine CDs, 10 hrs., $26.98 ISBN 978-1-60788-173-5

In Grahame-Smith's campy and bloody revisionist history, Abraham Lincoln's greatest accomplishment wasn't his rise to the presidency or the emancipation of millions of slaves: it was his heroic slaying of vampires far and wide. Lincoln is a man possessed, having lost his mother to a vampire and vowing early on to avenge her. As mindless and light fun as the story is, Scott Holst's narration is wrought with phony dialects, misdirected vocal shifts, and clichéd interpretations of historical figures, the least of which is surely Lincoln himself. Holst's voice shifts from a solid pitch-perfect, steady-paced tone to a shticky and forced Midwestern drawl. A Grand Central hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 11). (Apr.)