Get all the Flashman novels.  Do it now!  Egad!  Harumph! Flashman at Amazon Flashman on Google The Flashman Society (send cash)

June 8, 2003

The latest of the Flashman series.  Don't know why it took me so long to get around to it...  But here it is.

For those in the know, the Flashman novels of George Macdonald Fraser are the bee's knees, the cat's pyjamas and the sine qua non of historical fiction.  Ribald, sardonic, comical. 

For, don't ye see, Gen. Sir Harry Paget Flashman was the biggest rogue, poltroon, lecher, coward, cheat, toady and hero of the Victorian era. 

From the retreat from Kabul to the outbreak of the First World War, every major military and political disaster of the 19th century British Empire was really the fault (though he always avoided the blame) of none other than the quaking Flashman.  Given the long list of imperial catastrophes created by the "Hector of Afghanistan" it's amazing the Empire survived as long as it did.

And as if turning the British Empire on its ear wasn't enough, Flashman also manages to contribute to the start of the American Civil War, participate in the Battle of Little Big Horn, get married to an Apache bride (only one of a long series of bigamous unions), failed to prevent the execution of Mexico's Emperor Maximillian and serveed as the model for the leading man in the Ruritanian drama The Prisoner of Zenda (yet another bigamous liason culminating in the looting of the Crown Jewels of the Duchy of Strackenz) among other pecadillos, blunders, intrigues and escapes in sheer blind panic.

The charm of the Flashman series is the meticulous attention to historical detail (supplemented with copious footnotes and references), the delightful adherence to the literary conventions of Edwardian fiction (eg:  "Only paralyzed disbelief at these frightful words prevented me from depositing my dinner at his feet." ) and the rollicking narrative style of a reminiscing rascal who is forever reminding the reader that the facts are so damning to his reputation that he must be telling the truth.

Who could not resist the reminiscences of this bully, liar and cheat when he offers advice to his readers such as:

"One of the lessons that I'd impress on young chaps is this: if you want to pull a bluff, do it with all your might, no half-measures. However unlikely the ploy, if your neck is brazen enough, it's odds on you'll get away with it. Take the time I was caught in flagrante in a Calcutta hotel by an outraged husband, and sold him on the idea that I was a doctor sounding her chest, or the occasion when they found me climbing through Jefferson Davis's skylight and I pretended I was a workman come to fix his lightning-rod. A moment's guilty hesitation, and I'd have been done for; indignant astonishment at being interfered with saw me through."

In Flashman and the Tiger, there is a break from the previous series of novels to a collection of one novella, The Road to Charing Cross, 

• Beginning with Flashman honey-trapped and drugged into a Mittel Euopa nightmare of an assassination plot on Emperor Franz Josef which threatens to start WWI decades before its time and ending with the shirking bully being railroaded off to Khartoum in the tow of Chinese Gordon,

and two short stories The Subtleties of Baccarat

• Flashman's disreputable role in the notorious Tranby Croft gambling scandle involving HRH Edward the Prince of Wales covering up suspected cheating at cards.  Sir Harry, as usual, is simultaneously buttering up the royalty while also buttering the stairs...

 and Flashman and the Tiger

• Flashman explains what really happened to Holmes and Watson during "The Adventure of the Empty House" and describes by way of introduction his first meeting with Col. Sebastian "Tiger Jack" Moran during Flashy's panic-stricken flight from the disaster at Isandhlwana into the frying pan of the Battle of Rorke's Drift during the Zulu War.

The Flashman novels are a hoot.