As almost everybody knows, Arthur Conan Doyle will be forever linked (shackled, as he might have put it) to his epically successful detective character, Sherlock Holmes. And most of you will be aware that Doyle grew very weary of Holmes after a while, and killed him off (temporarily). He hoped he could win the public over to another character he created, an officer of Napoleon named Brigadier Etienne Gerard.

I bought The Complete Brigadier Gerard out of curiosity. There’s no question it’s a change of pace from the Holmes stories.

Brigadier Gerard is a Gascon, like D’Artagnan. And like D’Artagnan, he lives for honor and adventure. He is always ready to fight a duel or steal a kiss, and always first to volunteer for dangerous assignments. Where he differs from D’Artagnan is that he’s not terribly bright. His stories are told, we gather, in his old age, in an inn, to a group of friends. Gerard is now living on a pension, which he supplements by growing cabbages. He sighs over hard fate, which has denied him the advancement he has no doubt he deserved. He refers often to the medal for bravery he received from the Emperor himself, but which he never has with him. He keeps it, he says, in his apartment, in a leather pouch. I suspect we’re meant to understand that he actually had to pawn it.

In a series of semi-comic short stories, he tells of headlong adventures he enjoyed during the great wars. Sometimes on secret missions, sometimes accidentally separated from his company of hussars, he escapes from ambushes, traps and imprisonment, often (like the later Captain Kirk) with the help of some woman who has succumbed to his manly charm.

Generally (but not always) the joke is on Gerard. He can be counted on to run (or gallop) toward the sound of the guns, but he’s often clueless about what’s really going on. So confident is he of his own sagacity and aplomb that (in a manner that anticipates Inspector Clouseau) he often mistakes jeering for cheering. He is, however, never mean or small-minded.

I didn’t like The Complete Brigadier Gerard as much as I hoped to. The author is laughing at his hero (if somewhat affectionately), and the reader is too. For some reason that made me uncomfortable.

Your mileage may vary. No objectionable material. I might mention that I often forgot I was reading a Victorian/Edwardian book. Doyle wrote in a style ahead of his time.