Flashman and the Angel of the Lord
Flashman and the Angel of the Lord is a 1994 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the tenth of the Flashman novels. Plot introduction. Presented within the frame of the supposedly discovered historical Flashman Papers, this book describes the bully Flashman from "Tom Brown's School Days". The papers are attributed to Flashman, who is not only the bully featured in Thomas Hughes' novel, but also a well-known Victorian military hero. The book begins with an explanatory note detailing the discovery of these papers. The present novel takes place immediately after  Flashman in the Great Game and before "Flashman and the Dragon". It details Flashman's involvement with John Brown and his raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, from 1858 to 1859. Plot summary. At the start of the novel, Flashman leaves Calcutta before the wrath of a cuckolded husband can find him. He proceeds to South Africa, where by a chance meeting he reunites with John Charity Spring (whom he had worked for as a slaver in "Flash for Freedom!" and seen shanghaied in "Flashman and the Redskins"). Spring uses his daughter, Miranda, and her feminine wiles to have  Flashman drugged and sent to the United States, where charges against his old aliases still exist. Flashman manages to avoid the authorities, but Crixus (one of the chiefs of the Underground Railroad from "Flash for Freedom!") finds him and tries to convince him to join John Brown's attempt to start a slave rebellion. One of Crixus' followers, a black man named Joe Simmons, actually works for the Kuklos, a possible forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan. They also want Flashman to help Brown, but in order to start a civil war. One last double-cross exists: the wife of  the leader of the Kuklos works for Allan Pinkerton, who brings Flashman to meet William H. Seward. Seward, considered by many at that time to be the next President of the United States, also wants Flashman to join with Brown, but to slow him down and prevent the raid into the South from ever happening, and therefore prevent civil war. Of course Flashman fails at this, and he becomes an eyewitness to the whole event.