First farewell of 2008

George MacDonald Fraser, OBE, the author of the Flashman series, the pitch-perfect novel The Pyrates, and a host of other works, is dead at 82. Coincidentally, I started rereading a couple of Flashman novels over the weekend, and I finished Flashman in the Great Game this morning. I had forgotten how much fun they were. Although the Flash books, like the Bond movies, tend to follow a certain pattern—encounter with prominent British politico, meeting with a beautiful powerful and/or famous woman with whom our antihero gits it on, scene of diabolical torture, historical battle, Flashy exhibits cadfulness but triumphs (or appears to) by sneakery or luck—they're tremendously entertaining. They're educational, too, but not pedantic; like Patrick O'Brian, Fraser had a gift for bringing history to life, weaving the story through events rather than making the fictional bits a frame for a lecture on names and dates.

Ave atque vale, Mr. Fraser. Thanks for everything.

(ETA: And Neil Gaiman, writing from a month in the future,[he fix] has his own take.)