Paul Serup of Prince George has self-published Who Killed Abraham Lincoln? (Salmova Press / Sandhill Distributing $29.95), a 400-page plus study that gathers evidence to support the claims of a disaffected Catholic priest, Charles Chiniquy, that Abe Lincoln was the victim of a Catholic plot.

Chiniquy first became world famous in the mid-1800s for persuading a reported 200,000 people in his native Quebec to stop drinking. "In 1851, he was invited to establish a French-Canadian Catholic colony on the unsettled prairie south of Chicago," writes Serup. "Five years later, he made the acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln, who defended him in two high profile court actions.

"In 1858, Chiniquy left the religion of his childhood and became a Protestant, followed by more than a thousand of his countrymen. His fame increased worldwide as he spent the rest of his life speaking and writing extensively against the Church of Rome and trying to win his former co-religionist to simple faith in Christ."

First published in 1885, Chiniquy's autobiography Fifty Years in the Church of Rome went through some 70 editions prior to Chiniquy's death fourteen years after its appearance. The news of his death appeared on the front page of the New York Times as well as in other U.S. newspapers.

In his non-fiction investigation of Chiniquy's claims about Lincoln's assassination, incorporating information gleaned from court records, newspaper clippings, interviews and cemetery records, Serup notes that the man who headed the official investigation of the murder of President Lincoln, and the one who effectively ran the United States government during the time immediately after the assassination, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, also believed Lincoln was killed by Catholics.