FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME <i> by George MacDonald Fraser (Plume: $9.95) </i>

In his popular “Flashman” series, George Fraser has taken a minor character from Thomas Hughes’ “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” and turned him into one of the most dashing figures in the Queen Victoria’s Empire. Harold Paget Flashman is a coward, a liar, a cheat, a lecher and thoroughly entertaining. His efforts to save his own hide at all costs invariably lead him into the thick of the fray, where he becomes a hero in spite of himself.

In “The Great Game,” Flashy stumbles into the Sepoy Mutiny, where he matches wits with the beautiful Lakshmibai, Maharani of Jhansi, and his treacherous Russian nemesis, Count Ignatieff. The appalling carnage of the revolt gives this novel a slightly darker tone than other entries in the series. But Fraser’s research remains impeccable (he manages to sneak a chronology of real events into the notes), and Harry Flashman is never less than deucedly charming--as he’d be the first to point out.