by George MacDonald Fraser
Accused (falsely, amazingly enough) of cheating in a friendly game of
cards, Flashy injures the accuser in a rage. His reputation damaged,
Flash joins a ship’s crew until the scandal cools down – only to realize
to his horror (his own neck being on the line, of course) that it’s a
slave ship. Here begin Flashy's adventures on the high seas and America,
where at various times he is dragooned and bluffs his way into nearly
every role concerning the slave trade: buyer, trader, seller, driver on a
plantation, underground railroad smuggler, anti-slavery double agent,
almost even a slave himself at one point.
It’s all tremendous
stuff, full of the usual (on Fraser's part) erudition and wit and (on
Flashy's part) lechery, as well as, of course, the historical tweaking:
Flashman meets a young Disraeli, a young Lincoln, and even serves as the
inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book. Superb historical
parody, historical fiction, and pure entertainment all in one. Oh, a
final thought: Flashy's definitely gotten a lot braver since the first
book. Scared or not, it takes guts to pull a gun on a killer, or even
keep one's wits enough to play-act in the face of danger. That's most
likely a good thing, of course; as a reader, one can take only so much
helpless, quivering terror from the narrator.
five stars
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