Guest Review: The Case of the Reluctant Agent – Tracy Cooper-Posey

It is 1917 and the Great War has been raging for three long years.

Mycroft Holmes grows suspicious of one of his agents in Constantinople. Naturally, he wants to send a man to investigate who knows the language, the people and has an exemplary war record, including fourteen months posing as a German officer in Berlin. But Sherlock Holmes proves to be, for once, stubbornly unwilling to fulfill his older brother’s request.

When Mycroft is shot and left for dead, Holmes is forced to Constantinople to uncover the man behind the deed. Unfortunately, before he was assaulted Mycroft failed to communicate which agent was the turncoat.

So begins Holmes’ reluctant return to the Near East. Not only does the adventure provoke a bagful of memories both bitter and sweet but the hunt for the agent who betrayed them unravels with breath-robbing surprises that even Holmes with all his skills could never have anticipated.

Series:
Release Date:  December 5, 2012
Publisher:  Tracy Cooper-Posey
Source:  Provided by Author
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Reviewer’s Thoughts:

The Case of the Reluctant Agent is Tracy Cooper-Posey’s latest Sherlock Holmes mystery novel, this one taking place after “”His Last Bow””  By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The year is 1917 and the First World War is raging, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes asks him to head to the Middle East to help locate a double agent, after Sherlock turns him down Mycroft is shot and not expected to live, now Holmes must go and locate who this agent is and return him to justice as well as face the memories that haunt him of that area he spent so much time with Elizabeth.

Once again in true Sherlock Holmes fashion we are thrown into chasing down double agents across several continents and with enough red herrings to baffle  anyone but Holmes himself. We are without Dr Watson for most of this book because he his also serving in the war effort and isn’t brought in until the end. We are able to tie up loose ends from Chronicles of the Lost Years and finally find out what happened to Elizabeth 15 years earlier.

Again, I am VERY impressed with Tracey Cooper-Posey and her ability to write Sherlock Holmes close enough to the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that even he would have a hard time telling them apart. She is clever in her plot twists, true to Holmes in his logic and detailed thinking but she has also managed to give him  a little bit of emotion that the originals lacked. Once again let me state quite clearly this is NOT a mystery romance, it is not a Sherlock Holmes romance, it is not a romance at all, what it is, is a fantastic Sherlock Holmes tale that fits into the empty spaces that were left in the original Holmes tales.

Also as a history nerd I loved the time line of WWI events before the start of the book.

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