Flashman and the Angel of the Lord »

From George MacDonald Fraser (whom Kingsley Amis has called 'a marvelous reporter and a first-rate historical novelist' in The Sunday Telegraph), the good news continues: Flashman is back! If only he had got on with his dinner, and ignored the handkerchief dropped by a flirtatious hussy in a Calcutta hotel . . . well, American history might have been different. Lincoln might never have entered the White House; an elderly farmer might not have been hanged in his carpet slippers; a disastrous civil war might have been avoided; and Flashman himself might have been spared one of the most hair-raising adventures of his misspent life. If only! Alas - the arch-rotter of the Victorian Age can never resist the lure of a pretty foot, especially when he has just emerged from the Indian Mutiny and is, in his own felicitous phrase, 'beginning to itch for something English again'; he is after her like a shot, never suspecting that this is the first fatal step on a desperate journey in which his disgraceful American past catches up with him. He encounters old enemies thirsting for revenge, secret societies blackmailing him into their intrigues, undercover agents, escaped slaves, eccentric clergymen, hooded horrors, scheming and passionate beauties of assorted colors, and even Yankee politicians, before it all ends in blood and betrayal in the little Virginia town of Harper's Ferry, where John Brown and his gang of ragged fanatics fire the first shot in the great war against slavery. For seekers of historical enlightenment who have followed Flashman's fortunes and cheered him on, this tenth volume of 'The Flashman Papers' finds him once again at the very hinge of history, and - in the breathless intervals between flights, escapes, dalliances, and thunderous action - casting his sardonic and perceptive eye on human folly and frailty, and the bloody crisis that will shape the destiny of the American continent. And, as his legions of admirers know, history is never quite the same

Publishers Weekly

Roving British Army colonel Sir Harry Flashman, roisterous scoundrel and witty cynic, was a reluctant hero in exploits ranging from the Crimean War (Flashman at the Charge) to China's Taiping Rebellion (Flashman and the Dragon) in nine previous volumes of Fraser's Flashman Papers. In this latest installment, a mesmerizing mix of high adventure, outrageous humor and audacious drama, the cowardly Flashman is kidnapped in Cape Town, South Africa, and sails to Baltimore before being conscripted into abolitionist John Brown's doomed, bloody 1859 raid on a federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Va. U.S. government agents enlist Flashman as a spy to dissuade or forcibly prevent Brown from carrying out the raid, fearing that it might trigger civil war. Meanwhile, a band of hooded white supremacists abduct Flashman and order him to abet John Brown's attack, which they believe will unite the South and divide the North. Combining wild imagination, sardonic commentary on American mores and meticulous historical research, Fraser tells a masterful historical tale and presents a magnificent portrait of John Brown as a fearless, autocratic, murderous iron-willed zealot-``a fanatic, yes; a man driven by one burning idea... but never a madman.'' (Mar.)