Books: Reverse Irish

CRUSADE—Donn Byrne—Little Brown ($2). There is almost no getting around it, and Donn Byrnians will have to survive it as best they can—their favorite author has rewritten The Sheik with reverse English. Perhaps, though, the reverse is Irish enough to keep the faithful in the fold.

Returning to Palestine for a sentimental journey after the pseudo-austerities of his pilgrimage in Brother Saul, Author Byrne tells the tale of Miles O'Neill, a young Irish knight seeking fortune after being dispossessed at home. Palestine is technically at peace, between crusades. The saviors and guardians of the Lord's Sepulchre have nothing better to do than gamble extravagantly, dawdle quarrelsomely and bicker about Doctrine.

O'Neill joins a raid in which Bethlehem is snatched from its Saracen overlord. Returning in force, the Saracen prevails, but not until O'Neill has, with his bare hands, slain one of their champions. For this feat his life is spared by Kothra, the sheikess of the piece. First as prisoner, then as guest of Kothra and the Sheykh Haroun, her father, young O'Neill is torn between ancestral pride and desert love; also between his inherited Christianity, which the crusaders' irreligion spoils for him, and Islam, which his courteous captor-hosts gently urge.

After a thoroughly thrilling set-to with the Knights Templars, who are painted as Black-Mass men and whose assassins invariably go disguised as leprous beggars, O'Neill and Kothra hump themselves furiously on dromedary-back to the marge of the Lake of Galilee. The bloodhounds are coming! Quick, quick! Will he embrace Islam to save them both? Yes, yes! So, discreetly, they strip off their clothes and swim together out of the last chapter, presumably to board a Bedouin fishing smack, get back to Damascus and live in flower-fragrant happiness ever after.