CAPTAIN FANTOM - being an account of the Sundry Adventures in the life of Carlo Fantom, Soldier of Misfortune, Hard-man and Ravisher by Underhill, Charles ( pseud. of Reginald Hill)

New York 1980, St Martin's Pr, First US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, VG-/VG condition,(PREV BOOKSTORE STAMP AND PRICE on frt free end paper) 5 /12 x 8 1/2, , 224 pages. --------------------------------------------------------- `Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake thirteen languages ...He was very quarrelsome and a great Ravisher ...Said he, I care not for your Cause: I come to fight for your halfe-crowne, and your handsome women'. Thus wrote John Aubrey in his Brief Lives-and from this first and only biography of Captain Fantom , Charles Underhill has created this magnificently sustained story of the life and adventures of this strange, violent man-a story told in Fantom's own words.Central Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century is in that state of near-anarchy which came to be called the Thirty Years' War. Mercenaries flourish, and none more so than Carlo Fantom. He is the model of the hard-headed soldier, doing what he is paid for with skill and courage-but when the money stops so does he. Only with certain women does he throw caution to the winds. When the trumpets of his sexuality sounds time, place and person are of no consequence.Soon Europe becomes too hot for him and he retires to England for a breathing space. But women and wars await him there too. He forms the Fantom troop, a band of men specially picked for their military prowess and theirmoral depravity. They fight first for Parliament and then for King. Fantom's reputation grows. Superstition has it that he is a hard-man, with a skin impervious to shot. Carlo Fantom's story demonstrates no moral absolutes, neither the rewards of virtue nor the wages of sin. He merely was-but very powerfully.