Formula: Literary Guild

NIGHTRUNNERS OF BENGAL (339 pp.)--John Masters--Viking ($3).

The merchants, soldiers and women of the British community in India had little sense of what lay in store for them, those last days of 1856, on the eve of the Sepoy Mutiny. Even sturdy Captain Rodney Savage, 13th Rifles, Bengal Native Infantry, was slow to understand the signs and undercurrents: holy gurus croaking to the crows, the native nightrunners who were carrying from village to village the bread and goat-flesh symbols of Shiva, god of destruction.

As the hero of a blood & thunder historical novel, Rodney could certainly have paid more attention than he did to the uneasy behaviour of his own sepoy infantrymen. They were badly upset by the rumor (true enough, in fact) that their rifle cartridges were greased with a mixture of beef and hog fat: by the sanctions of religion, the use of beef fat was mortal offense to the Hindus among them, hog fat to the Mohammedans. Fanatics and profiteers, princes and foreign agents were also working overtime to stir up the sepoys. By the time Savage had it all deciphered, it was too late. The mutiny burst across Bengal, and hundreds of men, women & children were slaughtered before the British brought in enough reinforcements to crush it and execute the mutineers by cannonfire.

This whale of a story was not quite enough for Calcutta-born John Masters, 36, a wartime brigadier with Wingate in Burma, who has tackled the subject in a first novel. Faithfully following a popular formula (the book is a Literary Guild choice), Masters has lugged in such sideshows as tiger hunts, cholera epidemics and sweaty sessions between Hero Savage and a nubile native queen. ("Her bare thighs were warm, and her hands were on him...'I did wrong...but go on, go on. I love you.' ") Rodney Savage is a man of good will, and at the end of it all he has some compassionate reflections: only brotherly love can redeem "the inherent melancholy of power." But the message gets lost in all the shooting.

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