Flashman: avoid all imitations. And consider just...listening

Drew Ratter writes:

I am a big fan of George MacDonald Fraser. Which means, give me more! The problem seems to be that there isn't any more. There is quite a lot of the authentic, top quality GMF stuff, though, and certainly you can reread that maybe once a decade. Likewise, his memoir of his World War Two service in Burma, Quartered Safe Out Here is a complete delight.  

Fraser's Flashman novels - which would be what we are talking about, as his other fiction is middling at best - have a rash of imitations. But nothing I have found even manages to come in as decent pastiche.

For a slacker like me, reading novels was, for a long time, how I got my history. More recently I have changed, and read history constantly. Why this has happened, I am not sure, but partly at least, it has been through listening rather than reading. 

An subscription to Amazon's Audible service is a fantastic bargain, if you have to spend a lot of time driving. Eight pounds a month gets you a download a month, and naturally, you want the best value for money. That tends to be very long works for history, which then show you how much you don't know.

But I still like the fiction, as well. And anyway if Baudrillard is onto anything, fact or fiction, it might make less odds than we used to think in our Anglo-Saxon ghetto. 

So these days, you pore over the Kindle store, and if it is cheap enough, you go for it.

It is fair that, having downloaded and otherwise acquired some pretty ghastly material, during the quest, I should help others to steer clear. These are a couple of GMF imitators worth dodging, however keen you might be.

Avoid anything by Patrick Mercer. Anthony Morgan is his hero, in Afghanistan, a location none of these guys can resist. But Morgan just doesn't ring true.

Likewise anything by Robert Brightwell. He has hitched his wagon firmly to the Flashman star, methodology, name and everything, just a generation back from GMF. But no good. Brightwell's 'Thomas Flashman' even sails with Thomas Cochrane, and somehow even makes him a bit two-dimensional. 

Now, Cochrane, there was an incredible man. The basis for Patrick O Brian's hero Jack Aubrey, and hence for one of the towering works of literary genius conceived in the 20th century. So making him slightly tedious is a challenge in itself!

But really, Brightwell and his Thomas Flashman! The books simply don't work. There's no magic at all.

The search for Flashman substitutes of quality and distinction of course goes on. And I will let you know!