review of Andrew Lane’s Rebel Fire/ Red Leech

Sherlock spends a third of the book, the middle of it, trying to get back his kidnapped friend Matty with the help of Mr. Crowe and his daughter Virginia.  The reader learns more about Mr. Crowe as Sherlock does himself.  It turns out that Sherlock’s tutor was a man of importance who worked alongside the Pinkerton’s in America in order to take in war criminals.  The war criminals of the time would have been men of the Confederate Army.

Sherlock unmasks another plot to cause havoc to Britain.  He stops it in a manner that even the “bad guys” would not even have to lose any men.  The baddie of this book, Duke, does not understand or appreciate the sentiment.

This book is advisable to read because it has Sherlock Holmes coming into his own.  He kills and comes to terms with what that means for the first time.  He puts others before himself and yet, never stops being who he is while discovering what that is simultaneously.