novels to make me hooked

[Schweizer]

Another vote for the Flashman series.  That's the stuff that got me doing historical adventure, and it cemented a love for Victoriana that persists to this day.

Also, Beau Geste by P.C. Wren.  Foreign legion adventure mystery.

[Gallowglass]

There have been several recommendations for Flashman, and I'm a huge fan of Allan Mallinson's Matthew Hervey novels. Before I moved to the US from Ireland, I'd started reading John Wilcox's Simon Fonthill series. (The reason I mention the move is because I haven't yet seen the Wilcox books in a US bookstore).

The Fonthill novels are a bit like Cornwell's Napoleonic fiction featuring his well-known protagonist, Richard Sharpe. In the first story, "The Horns of the Buffalo" we're introduced our hero, Simon Fonthill, a young officer of the 24th Warwickshire, and the man who becomes his sidekick*, 762 Jenkins (because he's Welsh, you see).

Redcoated, redblooded ripping good yarns ensue, kicking off a series of "stirring deeds what won the Empire", taking Fonthill and Jenkins from Rorkes Drift, Kandahar, Majuba Hill, El Kebir and Khartoum as they take on Zulus, Boers, Pathans and all manner of other villians.....kind of the same way Sharpe and Harper singlehandedly defeat Napoleon and his minions (with intermittent assistance from some Spanish guerrillas and the occasional British infantryman, with Wellington occasionally turning up to take the credit).

Check 'em out here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=simon+fonthill

Literature they're not, but they are good fun.

*Irish, Welsh or Scottish sidekicks are obligatory for English infantry or naval officer protagonist characters. It's the law. I think it's also probably true in the US, as it's a well known fact that each and every NCO in the 19th century US cavalry was Irish, or at least attempted an Irish accent.

[anevilgiraffe]

...John Wilcox's Simon Fonthill series....

terrible terrible novels... very obviously some bloke thought, hmmm... that Sharpe thing worked quite well, I'll rip that idea off straight away... read Horns of the Buffalo and Road to Kandahar and both were terribly written, cliched and plotted - should have guessed really as they were £4 for the pair at Asda...

[Gallowglass]

terrible terrible novels...

Like I said, not literature.