Newest ‘Bloody Jack’ tale enjoyable

MY BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN, by L.A. Meyer, Harcourt, New York, 2008, hardcover, 436 pages, $17.

Corea author L.A. Meyer has returned with the sixth chapter in his young-adult “Bloody Jack” series, featuring the misadventures of plucky orphan Jacky “Bloody Jack” Faber.

After exploring the American West in the series’ last book, “Mississippi Jack,” Jacky finds herself heading back to Europe, as usual against her will.

The thing about Jacky is that while she has made a lot of friends since her time living as a street urchin in the London slums, she has made quite a few enemies as well. This problem crops up through “My Bonny Light Horseman.”

The British intelligence service, which has long dogged her steps, rescues Jacky from a French prison, only to send her back to France as a spy, first posing as a dancer, then as a cavalry messenger, in order to infiltrate Napoleon’s forces as he invades Germany. Jacky accomplishes her mission, as she evades death, through both luck and fate.

All this keeps Jacky separated from her own true love, naval officer Jaimy Fletcher, although she does take on a couple of male companions, one old, the other new, along the way.

Meyer makes learning history fun with the “Bloody Jack” series, and the rip-roaring yarn “My Bonny Light Horseman” is no exception, as the reader will gallop along with Jacky through another enjoyable adventure.