The Return Of Jack Absolute?

I love a clever conceit in an historical novel. C.C. Humphreys delivered a dandy in his Jack Absolute series.

Humphreys is a Canadian stage actor and swordsman who turned to writing historical novels that range from a tale of Anne Boleyn’s executioner to a realistic if not sympathetic take on Vlad Tepes — Dracula. The stage background is key to the 18th Century adventure series.

Jack Absolute was a “real” character. OK, so he wasn’t real-real — but he was an actual character in a popular London stage play. Humphreys’ conceit is that Jack is a real fellow, a soldier by trade, who is not especially pleased to be turned into a dramatic character in a play by his friend Tom Sheridan. Following so far? I think it’s fun and clever, as is the whole tale.

Here’s the basics:

The year is 1777. As the American Revolutionary War rages across the sea, London is swept off its feet by Jack Absolute, the dashing rogue in Richard Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals. When the real Jack Absolute, former captain of the 16th Light Dragoons, returns after years abroad he is immediately embroiled in an illegal duel over a backstage tryst at the Drury Lane theatre. Jack escapes with his life, only to find himself pressed again into the King’s service as a spy for the British in the Revolutionary War. With his Mohawk blood brother, Ate, at his side-and Loyalist beauty Louisa Reardon on his mind-Jack leaves England and sets sail for the wilds of North America.

It all makes for a fine Frontier Partisans escapade. The tone is interesting — lighthearted, but subtly delivering a punch. It’s very much in the picaresque tradition, and reminds me of Robert Moss’ Fire Along The Sky, set during Pontiac’s Rebellion in the 1760s. A character with a vivid voice, who thinks with his ever-rampant pecker, but generally ends up doing the right thing. I like characters like that…

Jack Absolute was followed by a prequel entitled The Blooding of Jack Absolute, which embroiled the young Jack in the French and Indian War and the campaign to take Quebec.

London: 1759: Jack Absolute is loved by the ladies and envied by his schoolmates. With a place secured at university and a baronetcy at hand, his future seems bright — if he can just stay out of trouble. But when Jack is caught red-handed with a powerful lord’s mistress, his good fortune is destroyed, forcing him to seek a new fate in the dangerous New World during the brutal French and Indian Wars. There, marooned amid hostile Indians and fierce colonial rivalries, the bawdy schoolboy disappears and a man emerges. Jack’s survival depends on winning the friendship and help of the natives, but those come at a high price.

Apparently Humphreys is — at long last — returning to the character, serving up a free short story at his website here.

The Jack Absolute novels are readily available on Kindle.

As I noted, Humphreys covers quite a broad swath of terrain in his stories. He’s got a new one hitting the streets in June that jumps into the 20th Century.
I like the sound of Chasing The Wind.

You should never fall in love with a flyer. You should only fall in love with flight.

That’s what Roxy Loewen always thought, until she falls for fellow pilot Jocco Zomack as they run guns into Ethiopia. Jocco may be a godless commie, but his father is a leading art dealer and he’s found the original of Bruegel’s famous painting, the Fall of Icarus. The trouble is, it’s in Spain, a country slipping fast into civil war. The money’s better than good — if Roxy can just get the painting to Berlin and back out again before Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring and his Nazi pals get their hands on it…

But this is 1936, and Hitler’s Olympics are in full swing. Not only that, but Göring has teamed up with Roxy’s greatest enemy: Sydney Munroe, an American billionaire responsible for the death of her beloved dad seven years before. When the Nazis steal the painting, Roxy and Jocco decide that they are just going to have to steal it back.
What happens when Icarus flies too close to the sun? Roxy is going to find out.

From African skies to a cellar in Madrid, from the shadow cast by the swastika to the world above the clouds on the Hindenburg’s last voyage, in the end Roxy will have just two choices left – but only one bullet.

He had me at running guns into Ethiopia.