Fanfare

MacAllan's ( Diamond Hard ) richly embroidered East-West epic, set in varying locales under Queen Victoria's rule, begins with a savagely detailed account of the massacre of 40,000 imperial troops in their retreat from Kabul. The only two survivors are Scottish physician Douglas Kintyre and the orphaned infant of a fellow soldier. Kintyre raises the boy, Benjamin Fanfare Bannerman, in Calcutta and Scotland until Ben runs away from their dour and oppressive housekeeper. While working in a traveling fair, he encounters another waif, Mary Jane Green, who has escaped debtors prison in London and then a whorehouse, before setting off to India for a better life. Is the possibility of such betterment an illusion? Not in this yarn, which, though somewhat pat, offers a shrewd analysis of class in both England and India. Ben buys himself a commission in the East India Company's Army and, after a series of hair-raising adventures, becomes rich by inventing a revolutionary automatic machine gun. He also rescues Mary Jane from certain death and proposes with military authority: ``We've said goodbye three times,'' he tells her. ``I'm never going to say goodbye again. And that is final.'' (June)