The Crusades, Without U.N.

RIDE HOME TOMORROW (343 pp.)--Evan John--Putnam ($3.50).

"On a Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem . . . After 70,000 Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue . .. the bloody victors ... ascended the Hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption."

Thus Historian Edward Gibbon describes one of the most momentous episodes in the history of Christendom--the capture by the Crusaders of Jerusalem. In Ride Home Tomorrow, his first novel to appear in the U.S., Britain's Evan John resumes the bloody story nearly a hundred years later (the close of the 12th Century), when Sultan Saladin unified the scattered Moslems and slowly crushed the beleaguered "kingdom which the Crusaders had established in Jerusalem.

Sedentary Scrutiny. Philosophers have never agreed in their opinions of the Crusaders. To Voltaire it seemed fantastic to believe that such ruthless warriors could also be moved by honest piety; to Hume, such a blend of piety and piracy seemed perfectly typical of human nature. More recently, Britain's Lord Dunsany declared that the "adventure of the Crusades [was] the wisest policy that European statesmen ever formulated," because it cleared all the gangsters out of Europe and gave "the arts of peace ... a chance to blossom."

To a good many fevered citizens, the mixed elements of the Crusades (with a few fair females thrown in) will be just what the doctor ordered. Only in the historical novel can the contemporary reader indulge such a wide variety of tempestuous passions without having to worry about what the United Nations ought to do about it. On the other hand, he can play to the full the sedentary man's favorite game of being a judge of human affairs--with an incomparable host of kings, knights, bishops and princesses filing into the dock under his just but piercing scrutiny. He can also pick up some fascinating history without having to plow through Gibbon.

Jam-Bang, Blue Eyes. Ride Home Tomorrow supplies all this, as well as other ingredients essential to popular historical fiction. Hero Andres Vaeringer is a handsome, upstanding fellow with a vast curiosity about the world. Born & bred in Norway, he quarrels with his crusty stepfather and flees to England--just in time to run slap into Robin Hood and his merry men and get himself captured by that fine old favorite, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Saved from the scaffold by a pious knight, Andres gets shipped off to the Holy Land, where the air is so thick with plots and subterfuge it can be cut with a Damascus blade. And there, jam-bang in the middle of it all, awaiting her true knight, sits the "only one who mattered ... to me ... with a clear skin she had no need to paint, blue eyes shining with mischief, and bright hair, in which gold strove with auburn, rippling out from, under her coif." The name's Yvette.

The book has a sad ending, but there's a tussle with Saladin and a rousing trip to Constantinople before that, and all in all, Mika (The Egyptian) Waltari had better look to his laurels.

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