The Deceivers

288 pp. "The new novel by John Masters, author of last year's best-selling Nightrunners of Bengal, is again a story of India, and again illustrates the author's superb ability to set an absorbing narrative against an exotic and authentic background of place and time. Based on historical fact, The Deceivers tells the story of the attempt of a British civil servant in the early nineteenth-century India to uncover the infamous cult of Kali -- the Hindu Destroyer-Goddess. Called the Thugs -- Hindustani for 'Deceivers' -- this secret religious organization operated throughout the length and breadth of India, practicing murder and robbery on the most terrifying scale in recorded history. Building on this indreibly dramatic situation, John Masters tells the story of William Savage, who leave this government position, his bride of six months, and his British identity, to travel the roads with a band of Deceivers and try to accumulate evidence that will move his superiors to action. The consequences that flow from this perilous venture make up a crescendo of death, love, and daring at its most dangerous."