Most Similar to Flashman?

What other authors or series do you think is most like the Flashman series?

John Biggins perhaps. Amazon and LibraryThing Suggestions both mention Bernard Cornwell and the Sharpe series, but Sharpe is much too straight an arrow, isn't he?

In sending invites for this group to people with several of Fraser's books, I noticed that a number of them also listed the Hornblower series. Certainly not like Flashman, but I reckon Hornblower should show up as a suggestion for Flashman readers.

> 1 That's an interesting question. If you're looking for someone who writes good fiction around real events, there are several - Cornwell of course, and (stretching it a bit) Patrick O'Brian in some of his books.

But I don't think anyone would dare have a Flashy sort of character. That would be a quite insincere form of flattery.

Kerry

From an 18th C Naval perspective, Dewey Lambdin copped his entire style from Fraser. Did a pretty good job too.

Would you please tell us more about Dewey Lambdin and his protagonist?

And Dougwood57, would you please tell us more about Biggins?

Although Professor Bernard Quatermass is NOT a despicable character like Our Flashy I enjoy the work of Nigel Kneale in much the same way as I enjoy Fraser’s work.

Kneale wrote top-notch fiction in the horror, science fiction and other genres. He also wrote screenplays and radio plays.

Edwin Thomas's, Martin Jerrold books show an obvious Flashy influence, regardless they're pretty good (each book improves over the other). There was a American knock off of Flash, Fenwick Travers, that was amazingly well done. Our hero gets dragged off to Panama, and the Phillipines and suffers Flash like humiliations. I think only three books were written in the series, a shame, because the author was very talented (I often wondered if it was GMF writing under a pseudonym).

John Biggins wrote a series of books in the 1970's set in World War I and featuring Otto Prohaska, a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian military. He tells the stories as a 100-year-old resident of an 'old folks home' resident. Prohaska has all sorts of luck, a lot of it bad and ends up in some pretty funny situations - one involves a stew made with rotten cabbage and eaten by the crew of a very small submarine. The first book is A Sailor of Austria.

The books have recently been republished by a McBooks Publishing.

The most like Flashman I have read is the series by Paul C Doherty, about Roger Shallot. He originally wrote the series under the name Michael Clynes and they were in order

1. The White Rose Murders
2. The Poisoned Chalice
3. The Grail Murders
4. A Brood of Vipers
5. The Gallows Murders
6. The Relic Murders

all are excellent stories and as with Otto Proshaka the books are narrated in first person by Shallot from his secret study as he dictates his memoirs when aged close to 100. The books are set in the early years of Henry VIII's reign and Shallot is a self serving anti hero who works as a spy/effectuator for Henry. You get all sorts of interesting twists to history as Shallot tells "the real truth" of what happened in some of these shadier doings.

Cheers

Thanks Macbeth. Just put the white rose murders on reserve at the Library. It sounds great!

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this (if they did, and I missed it, then I apologize) - the Brigadier Gerard series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Similarities, but not extremely alike. Gerard is basically a buffoon, and his army superiors frequently send him on missions they don't expect him to be able to fulfill, but he always comes through.

GMF actually wrote the foreword to at least one edition of the collected stories - I think there were 18 stories in all.

(I'm new to LibraryThing and to this group - hence the delay.)

The comparison between Flashman and Gerard is fascinating - thank you for pointing it out.

Of course, the big difference is that Gerard is truly gallant, that is, he volunteers for perilous missions, whereas Flashman gets pitchforked into them.

I've recently come across a Flashman lookalike The Carton Chronicles, just out on Amazon. The hero is Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities who apparently had a change of mind and escaped the Guillotine. It reads well, very Flashmanesque, cynical and scurrilous, and a good romp through the history of the French Revolution and the Terror. Definitely worth a shot.

Perhaps not quite the same level of historical accuracy, but Richard Curtis's Blackadder is a character who, if not as lucky as Flashman, is certainly as dethpicable (to quote Daffy Duck).

The King's Irishman by Robert Moss. Our hero is a rake from the British-Irish aristocracy who, due to a dodgy gamble, ends up in North America about a century before Flashman and rogers his way through the wars and intrigues between the British, French and Native Americans. Although he's not such a coward and self-publicist as Flashman, much of his behaviour is very similar. I think it's a one-off novel, not a series.

It is looking like the character Aelric in Richard Blake's series is shaping up to be somewhat like Flashman. Certainly he is as cynical and amoral, but is somewhat less cowardly. The books so far are Conspiracies of Rome, The Terror of Constantinople and The Blood of Alexandria with The Sword of Damascus coming soon. The setting is Europe in the early 600's. I am currently about halfway through book 1 and am enjoing it immensely.

Cheers

LT just suggested this group to me, so I looked at the most recent threads and checked out out your suggestions. I can see some serious book-buying in the near future. Thank you!

Well, I thought I had most of 'em.

Has anyone read this, and is it any good?

Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq, Tayler, H. C. Hardback

>18 Novak: Three people on LT have this catalogued, and the single review is scathing. Someone trying to catch a ride on Flashy's coattails with a book set in the 20th century.
Looking this up, I also noticed that someone (Richard Brightwell) has a spinoff series featuring Harry's uncle Thomas who has naval adventures in the Georgian and Regency era. They seem to be better written, but they could just as well feature a hero unrelated to Harry.

>19 MissWatson: Thanks for that. I don’t think I will be troubled to track that one down.

I’ve just finished “Flashman’s Lady”. I loved it and thought it was very clever. GMF does not miss a trick in his writing does he? In the passages from Elspeth’s (Mrs Flashman’s) diary, we find they were edited long ago by her very bitchy sister-in-law. This gave Fraser an extra dimension that was very amusing.

>20 Novak: Yes, it's much more fun to re-read the real Flashy. I haven't touched them for a long time...

>21 MissWatson: I haven't touched them for a long time...

Aren’t good books are always as good (if not better) when re-read? After reading the first Flashy when it first came out I have found and lost almost all of them somewhere along the way and enjoyed every one.

Now I have more time and am hunting them all down again, I am sure they have even improved with time, if that's possible :)

ETA:

Have you read any of the excellent reviews written by MikeFutcher on LT for the Flashman books? He says it all for me.

>22 Novak: Yes, I agree, he really does them justice.

WINSCONSIN !!

>24 Novak:

Ha! I've just re-read that one. Hang on, I just need to put on some dirty rags and find my pepper-pot revolver and I'll be on my way to help you. I'm several thousand miles away, mind, so it might take me a while to get there by camel and donkey...

>25 John5918: Thank goodness someone is awake! (What a laugh)

I can hang on but try not to be too long because they are wafting up the flames on the grill at any moment.

If you can save me I may be able to reward you with quite a big diamond.

>26 Novak:

As long as you don't expect me to retrieve it directly from your navel...

>27 John5918:

That was lucky - - - Just as they decided to roast me, the gas ran out. While they were all arguing about who’s turn it is to put a rupee in the meter I managed to sneak away. (Flashmanesque ?)

Thanks for your offer of help, though, it helped me through a bad time.

My time in captivity has not been wasted, however. I have penned a little ditty that I am sure will be all the rage in the music-halls when I make it back to civilization.

ETA:

Look out for it, it is titled: Please! Mr Custer. (I don’t wanna go!)

I would like to add another series to the list here. The Bandy Papers by Donald Jack features the stories of Bartholomew Bandy from WWI until WWII, and everything in between. He's less of a cad, and more of an accidental hero, but the series includes 8 or maybe 9 books. Three Cheers for Me, is volume 1.

I really enjoyed Fletcher`s Fortune` by J.C.Edwards.

Come to think of it Anno Dracula by Kim Newman has something of the Flashman style

If you can find a copy, there is a memoir, "Alamein to Zem Zem" by Keith Douglas that is worth a look.

Douglas was a young tank commander in the Desert who was later killed in action in Normandy, "Alamein to Zem Zem" being written before he died. In reading the book it felt to me very familiar in style to GMF's "McAuslan" books and also his Burma memoir "Quartered Safe Out Here", which made me wonder if GMF had ever read Douglas' work... or whether it was simply the self deprecating style and tone of the generation...

>32 Bushwhacked:

Thanks for that recommendation. I've just found the Kindle version on Amazon and it's currently downloading. Wish I could get the real hard copy in my hand, but the e-book is better than nothing.

Hope you enjoy it johnthefireman.

Just finished reading it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very down to earth. I note that he is more sympathetic to the enemy than GMF. Douglas treats POWs well because he'd heard they treated some captured members of his own regiment well.

Ethan Gage, hero of William Dietrich's series (Napoleon's Pyramids, The Dakota Cipher, The Emerald Storm, etc.) is more globe-trotting swashbuckler than full-bodied poltroon, fitting somewhere on the spectrum between Flashman and the characters in GMF's The Pyrates.

>19 MissWatson: >20 Novak:

It seems that Robert Brightwell has continued with the naval adventure (published in 2012) and has shot out another 8 stories, with one more "Flashman and the Zulus" due for publication in October 2020.

I'm not in a hurry to track them down and read them, but should one cross my path at a secondhand bookshop or bookfair I might grab it and let you all know.

Cheers