Jaws of Death

By Ray Sokolov

FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE by GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER 286 pages. Knopf. $6.95.

Cannons to the right of him, cannons to the left of him, Flashy is back in the saddle again. Saber up, pants down, his wit a well-stropped razor, he careers through the fourth installment of his adventures as the British Empire's raciest, cheekiest hero.

Like the three previous "packets" of fictional Flashman memoirs (Author Fraser pretends to be nothing more than

His Scapegrace's editor), this yarn is a thorough, almost scholarly pastiche of Victorian lingo and manners. It fairly reeks of historical authenticity--and of blood--for Flashman, in his early 30s, is still his old bully self, a lucky coward and a genial sadist.

The year is 1854, and after "rog-ering" his wife in a London closet, he departs for the Crimea, where--you have guessed it already--he leads the charge of the Light Brigade (without meaning to), falls prisoner to Cossacks, escapes from the Russian steppes by sled, and, after many a contretemps, foils the Czar's plan to overrun India by helping a grisly band of Transcaucasians to blow up two boatloads of gunpowder.

Along the way, he manages to dally with two Cossack women and one semi-Chinese Amazon known as the Silk One. He picks up fluent Russian and pushes into Pushtu and Persian. As usual, his feats are preposterous and irresistible--if they happen to strike the reader in the right mood. Well and good, but Fraser had better not rest on his laurels. American Flashmaniacs can hardly be expected to wait much longer for him to come across with the great man's oft-hinted-at memories of cutthroat days at Little Big Horn and gunfights with Kit Carson. Ray Sokolov

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