Flashman's Lady (Flashman 03) [Paperback]

George MacDonal Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Series: Flashman 03 | Publication Date: August 2, 1999

A game of cricket lands Flashman in thrall to a mad barbarian queen in Madagascar in Volume VI of the Flashman Papers. Flashman accepts an invitation from his old enemy, Tom Brown of Rugby, to join in a friendly cricket match, little suspecting that he is letting himself in for the most desperate game of his scandalous career. What follows is a deadly struggle that sees him scampering from the hallowed wicket of Lord's to the jungle lairs of Borneo pirates, from a Newgate hanging to the torture pits of Madagascar, and from Chinatown's vice dens to slavery in the palace of 'the female Caligula' herself, Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar. Had he known what lay ahead, Flashman would never have taken up cricket seriously.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The Flashman books bristle with action, and are very, very funny' The Times

About the Author

The author of the famous Flashman Papers and the Private McAuslan stories, George MacDonald Fraser has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada. In addition to his novels he has also written numerous screenplays, most notably The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and the James Bond film, Octopussy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins Pb (August 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006513018
• ISBN-13: 978-0006513018
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,187,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flashy's best, July 18, 2000

By 

Lloyd A. Conway (Detroit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flashman's Lady (Mass Market Paperback)

The author brings several worlds to vivid life, in this novel that links several stories into a seamless whole. I personally think that Frasier missed his calling: he should have been a sportswriter. The cricket game, with poor idiot Elspeth as the prize, is told so well that I've re-read it several times. Each of the worlds he creates, Frasier fills with such colorful characters that they are three-dimensional. The cricket game brings us Deadlius Tighe, esq., a classic scoundrel; Singapore is personified in Catchick Moses; and British imperial/missionary zeal in James Brooke. (The depiction of Brooke inspired me to read everything that I could find on this fighting seaman and colonizer.) Best of all is a villan equal to Flashy himself: Sulemann Usman. The novel gives the reader the wide world, and does it in such a way as to make it seem real, as in the eyes of a 19th century mind. A keeper that brings genuine enjoyment with every re-reading. -Lloyd A. Conway

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flash Outshined, July 4, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Flashman's Lady (Mass Market Paperback)

Harry Flashman - despicable poltroon or modest unreliable narrator, depending on your literary whim - shows himself eclipsed by a bolder rogue and a genuine hero in the first half of this too-long novel. The bolder rogue kidnaps Harry's wife, and the genuine hero, the authentic White Rajah of Sarawak, rescues her... almost.

By far the most entertaining portion of this sixth Flashman novel is the first quarter, which features a hilarious account of cricket as played in Jolly Old England in the middle of the 19th C. Harry, naturally, is a cricket phenom, whose skill is exceeded only by his skullduggery. Then Harry find himself once more en route to hellish adventures in the colonies. His travelogue description of Singapore is worth the price of a ticket there, and in Singapore, he encounters James Brooke, the White Rajah, the Hotspur character who overshadows him for another quarter of the text.

The second half of the book is effectively another novel, one that seems thin and anticlimactic after the first. Harry gets himself imprisoned in the clutches of a madwoman-queen. Finally he escapes. Ho hum. But another side of our Flashman is revealed; he actually risks his skin to save his addlepated little wifey. How will we ever be certain again that he's as much of a coward as he boasts?

Author GM Fraser introduces an innovation in this volume; part of the story is told by Mrs. Flashman, in the form of pages from her diary. She's not the narrator her husband is.

Except for the cricket chapters, this is a less amusing Flash than the others I've read. If you're plowing your way through the life story of England's most meretricious hero, you have every right to skip an episode now and then.

The more I think about it tonight, the more uncomfortable I find myself getting over the question of whether one should laugh or vomit at Harry's racism and sexism. I begin to think I'm obliged to do both, or else give the series up.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flashy shows a spark of selflessness in spite of himself, May 24, 2005

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Flashman's Lady (Mass Market Paperback)

In the 1966 screen adaptation of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) advises his daughter Meg (Susannah York):

"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.