What a scream.  I was expecting a sort of Bulldog Drummond meets Bernie Wooster thing here, but my first glance showed me a name I revere in fiction . . . Harry Flashman.

You don’t get much better reference to Victorian Englande than that, and Flashman (and his much lamented creator George MacDonald Frazer) certainly revelled in the sort of fraud and fooforaw this work unabashedly lays on.  A rich hasty-pudding of stiff upper lip and loose translation.

The only bone I would pick with this is that the diction lapses a lot.  Flashman wouldn’t say, "Um" and in general the characters lapse into speech more like 21st century television than Victorian gentry/knavery.

But it’s a lot of fun.

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.
Help us improve!  Register or log in to rate this review.