Sir Harry Paget Flashman / Beauchamp Millward Comber

The 89-year-old narrator and chief character in the novel, "Flashy" resumes his memoirs where Flash for Freedom! leaves off. He is going on 28, posing as the late Lt. Beauchamp Millward Comber, R.N., having by vague testimony exonerated the Balliol College's master, John Charity Spring, in a New Orleans naval court, and received Spring's promise of safe passage home to England in exchange for the written evidence of slave-running that Flashy/Comber has preserved. Under a variety of pseudonyms—Starnberg, Prescott, Arnold, and Howard—Flashy is wanted by the law up and down the Mississippi River. He must leave America and the furor in London over a gambling brawl has died down to where he may return. Unfortunately Spring steps into a nasty situation where an old acquaintance recognizes Flashy and calls for the police, and Spring accidentally knifes him...