Flash for Freedom! is the third of George MacDonald Fraser's novels about the anti-hero Flashman. I've written before about my mixed feelings towards Flashman and his general loathsome-ness. Here, Flashman gets caught up in the Atlantic slave trade and his main concern is not moral concern about slavery, but about the trade's illegality in 1848 and getting caught.

It's obvious that Frasier researches the historical settings of these novels with care (these are adventure stories with footnotes) and the descriptions of the slave transport were particularly disturbing. There's a lighter side to the book as well—Flashman meets Abraham Lincoln and lives out part of the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'm continuing to read the series, but I don't know if enjoy would be the right word to describe my appreciation of the books.

But here's an odd little footnote of my own about someone who evidently did enjoy the book. The Chicago Public Library has books 1, 2, and 4 of this series, but not this one. I don't know if it's the topless woman on the cover or the slavery or just, you know, it's an obscure old book. But so I had to buy a used copy. And tucked into my copy was this yellowed note:

("Tom—This beats Lolita 10:1. Jack)

FuzzyCo grade: A