Sharpe's Assassin by Bernard Cornwell is the first Sharpe novel since 2007. It starts like the next day after the Battle of Waterloo (as told in Sharpe's Waterloo) wherein Colonel Richard Sharpe, Sergeant Major Patrick Harper, and Sharpe's South Essex battalion are tasked with advancing hard, ahead of the army, to free political prisoners kept at a fortress 60 miles away.

Having done that Sharpe, Harper and a few men are sent to not-yet-occupied Paris to find if La Fraternité, a cabal of Napoleon loyalists, are plotting to assassinate the Duke of Wellington when he arrives in Paris. That mission is complicated by Alan Fox, dilettante art dealer who knows about La Fraternité but is more interested in repatriating the vast store of stolen artworks held in Napoleon's Museum (the future Louvre).

In part three Sharpe has found La Fraternité in the form of the last survivor, Colonel Lanier, who has a battalion of light infantry hidden at a nearby vineyard. Sharpe now has the South Essex again and along with a Prussian battalion they plan to storm the vineyard against a foe most likely waiting for them...

The tactical actions are described well. Cornwell is good at depicting action and mayhem and groups doing tactical maneuvering in a way that is easy to picture in my mind. Characterization is fair though not that deep -- not that it needs to be since there are so many novels each building up Sharpe and Harper bit by bit. I like the bits of history thrown in though since the story doesn't revolve around a battle I'm not familiar with the history.

Overall it's a good Sharpe novel and a good read. I wouldn't say a literary classic but well worth reading for Sharpe fans.