Now you either enjoy this kind of book - or you don't! Now I do - but with long intervals between volumes. This whole series (and did George MacDonald Fraser ever write any other books than the Flashman series?) is about the ant-hero of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays'. Flashman is a bully, a coward, a bounder and cad, a womaniser and a surprising sexual athlete. He's also remarkably lucky - and sees the easy way out of every situation. This has the result of him turning into the most decorated military hero of the Victorian age - completely mistakenly and by pure luck. Every volume sees him turn up at the worst military disasters of the nineteenth century and he alone survives and emerges smelling of roses - The Little Big Horn with Custer, the Retreat from Kabul, with Gordon at Khartoum, Rourke's Drift, the Charge of the Light Brigade with Cardigan - Sir Harry Flashman VC is there at them all. Everywhere he goes women of all classes fall at his feet, into his arms and into his bed. This is the Boy's Own Paper 'with one bound he was free' school of writing. You have to suspend your disbelief, because the situations are ludicrous, totally fanciful and generally physically impossible. In this book there are three episodes - Flashman becomes embroiled in an assassination plot to kill the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and acts (unwillingly) as the agent of Bismark in order to foil the plot; he then uncovers the truth about the scandal at Tanby Croft (the Prince of Wales was called as a witness in a libel case involving an allegation of cheating at baccarat); finally he seeks revenge against Capt Jack 'Tiger' Moran - who accuses him of cowardice in the face of the enemy (irony there of course) during the Zulu Wars - and Flashman meets up with the other fictional giant of the late Victorian era - Sherlock Holmes.
All totally ludicrous - but a ripping yarn and I rate this book 7/10.
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