Flashman's Lady (The Flashman papers) (Paperback)

For those of you unfamiliar with the Flashman volumes I feel great envy. To be able to read them again from scratch would be a joy. However, the name of Harry Flashman may be familiar to you from Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. He was the main villain of the piece who eventually got kicked out of Rugby for getting drunk. The first volume (Flashman) details what happens to Flashy from the moment he was kicked out to when he managed to secure the thanks of Parliament for his herioc deeds in the Army in Afghanistan. The fun of Flashman is that he is a complete bounder and coward, with a magnetic attraction for disaster and personal danger. He usually tumbles into each escapade as a result of trying to get his leg-over a member of the fairer sex; the volume 'Flashman's Lady' is no exception.

So, due to his scurrilous behaviour with some bookies at a cricket match, and a Duke's Mistress he ends up voyaging half way around the globe with his wife and her father at the expense of a suspiciously generous Eastern trader. No sooner have they all arrived in Singapore then the Trader kidnaps the wife, whilst Flashy is Shanghied at a brothel, before being forced to pursue her into a pirates nest.

Now with most novels of this kind I would have just given away about two thirds of the plot, and as like dissuaded you from picking the thing up for a scan, however, with this particular beauty I have barely scratched the surface. Even so, I could try my damndest to spoil the story for you, and could even succeed, but I could never spoil the book itself. For we know that Flashy will survive (it's his memoirs after all) the joy is in the journey, and how he manages to scrape through with reputation intact. The added bonus of ths volume (and why it is my favourite) is the extracts from his dotty wife's journal. They are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, providing you have a little empathy about you.

I would always recommend reading the Flashman series in order, but if you only want a taste of it, then you can do no worse than this volume. It is an absolute gem and worth every penny you can spare to secure a copy.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Flashman volumes I feel great envy. To be able to read them again from scratch would be a joy. However, the name of Harry Flashman may be familiar to you from Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. He was the main villain of the piece who eventually got kicked out of Rugby for getting drunk. The first volume (Flashman) details what happens to Flashy from the moment he was kicked out to when he managed to secure the thanks of Parliament for his herioc deeds in the Army in Afghanistan. The fun of Flashman is that he is a complete bounder and coward, with a magnetic attraction for disaster and personal danger. He usually tumbles into each escapade as a result of trying to get his leg-over a member of the fairer sex; the volume 'Flashman's Lady' is no exception.

So, due to his scurrilous behaviour with some bookies at a cricket match, and a Duke's Mistress he ends up voyaging half way around the globe with his wife and her father at the expense of a suspiciously generous Eastern trader. No sooner have they all arrived in Singapore then the Trader kidnaps the wife, whilst Flashy is Shanghied at a brothel, before being forced to pursue her into a pirates nest.

Now with most novels of this kind I would have just given away about two thirds of the plot, and as like dissuaded you from picking the thing up for a scan, however, with this particular beauty I have barely scratched the surface. Even so, I could try my damndest to spoil the story for you, and could even succeed, but I could never spoil the book itself. For we know that Flashy will survive (it's his memoirs after all) the joy is in the journey, and how he manages to scrape through with reputation intact. The added bonus of ths volume (and why it is my favourite) is the extracts from his dotty wife's journal. They are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, providing you have a little empathy about you.

I would always recommend reading the Flashman series in order, but if you only want a taste of it, then you can do no worse than this volume. It is an absolute gem and worth every penny you can spare to secure a copy.

"If (God) suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can. And, yes Meg, then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping."

One of the most endearing qualities of author George MacDonald Fraser's anti-heroic protagonist, Harry Flashman, is his natural cowardice, which he freely admits with a certain degree of pride. Flashy is an expert at escaping; More would have been impressed.

In that volume of his memoirs entitled FLASHMAN'S LADY, Flashy is still young in the mid-1840s. His talent for a prudent and precipitous departure has yet to mature, as evidenced by his delayed response when beset by thugs in a dodgy section of Singapore:

"I'm not proud of what happened in the next moment. Of course, I was very young and thoughtless, and my great days of instant flight and evasion were still ahead of me, but even so, with ... my native cowardice to boot, my reaction was inexcusable ... in my youthful folly and ignorance, I absolutely stood there gaping ..."

The larger portion of this book's plot involves the kidnapping of Flashy's beautiful but scatterbrained wife, Elspeth, by a certain Don Solomon Haslam, a moneyed and mannered member of English high society who's not what he seems. Harry's determination to stay out of harm's way is severely taxed as he pursues Elspeth's rescue into the pirate-infested interior of Borneo, and later into Madagascar, where Flashy finds himself the slave of that island's mad and despotic queen, Ranavalona.

A chief attraction of Fraser's Flashman series is the knowledge it gives the reader about historical and factual, but arcane, events and places. In FLASHMAN'S LADY, the reader is apprised of the private war against the pirates of the East Indies by the eccentric English imperialist, James Brooke, and the reign of terror perpetuated by that female Caligula of the period, Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar. Indeed, the author's research into the latter has prompted me to place a non-fiction history of the subject on my Wish List.

Deep down, I think, Flashy's personal appeal is based on the realization that he's Everyman, whether one would wish to admit it or not. Our natural preference is to escape, and it's only through blundering circumstance, good luck, or an odd quirk of fate that any one of us might, like Harry himself, be perceived a hero by our fellows.