Victorian England Gets Real : A DANGEROUS FORTUNE, <i> By Ken Follett (Delacorte Press: $23.95; 512 pp.)</i>

Ken Follett has probably helped more people through interminable airplane flights than Dramamine and a fine screw-top Cabernet. From international terrorists to crafty Nazis, he’s forever plundering history for a good character. (Heck, he’s even plundered real-life for a good yarn, transforming H. Ross Perot--that improbable combination of Ayn Rand and Mr. Dithers--into an equally improbable combination of G.I. Joe and Horatio Alger in “On Wings of Eagles.”) Literature, shmiterature. Anyone who can do that is pretty impressive.

So, it would seem to be a pretty good bet that Follett’s new novel, “A Dangerous Fortune,” would turn out to be a terrific page-turner. It would also seem to be a pretty good bet that skulduggery, suspense, and each and every one of the seven of the deadly sins would take their turn on stage before the story is over. What you might not expect is that Follett would ignore Nazis, terrorists and billionaire populists in favor Victorian England and a family dynasty of merchant bankers.

Admittedly, this might sound about as thrilling as watching a daguerreotype of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” The reason why the vast majority of sentient beings (rightfully) run screaming from “historical” fiction is that its bad practitioners insist upon seeing our predecessors as little more than goofily dressed and inefficiently lit versions of ourselves. Couple this with any amount of Laura Ashley-style shopping mall-Anglophilia (which insists upon seeing merry-old England as the apex of civilization and full of tiny scented soaps), and you have the potential for a doubly woeful disaster.

Fortunately, Follett neatly sidesteps this problem by exercising a fairly acute eye for the telling historical detail and a fair sense that people from the past weren’t like us--and that’s precisely what makes them so interesting.

The story begins in 1866, with the inexplicable drowning of a young student at the quarry at the Windfield School, an idyllic enclave for the sons of the successful businessmen and engineers then rapidly supplanting the English aristocracy. The drowning--is it an accident or a murder?--sets off a series of events that spread out in ever-widening circles as the time goes by, rather like--well, rather like a schoolboy being dropped in a pond, actually. Eventually, the drowning, and the host of secret alliances, deceits and alternative histories it spawns, comes to wreak enormous havoc not only the on Windfield boys themselves, but on the entire country as well.

The reason this one event has such impact is that two of the boys involved are heirs-apparent to Pilasters Bank, one of the wealthiest and most influential merchant banks in all of England. It is the head of Pilasters Bank who holds “the prosperity of nations in his hands,” and it is he who can make or break aristocrats, kings or even revolutionaries. As the old guard at Pilasters prepares to step aside (willingly or not), it is these young Pilasters and their shifting alliances of Windfield friends, relatives and mentors who vie for control of this powerful dynasty in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world.

And vie they do. Murder. Deceit. Bizarre sexual obsessions. Follett’s Pilasters and their friends make the Machiavellis look like slackers. From Micky Miranda (the consummate outsider whose charming manner masks the desperate lengths to which he will go to remain inside), to Edward Pilaster (the rather dim-bulb whose hidden passions come out only in the most destructive manners), to cousin Hugh (whose unusual dalliances are constantly getting himself into trouble)--this is quite a collection of folks. Add to this mix a few nascent socialists, a sadistic Cordovan mercenary, an investigative reporter and a circus performer and you’ve pretty much got all of your bases covered. Are these stock characters? Sure. Are they two-dimensional in their choices and actions? Absolutely. Are they predictable? Surprisingly, no. Follett throws in enough genuine surprises so that--even if the mustache-swirling villain does come to a bad end--he does so unexpectedly. And often he outdoes himself, as in the character of Augusta Pilaster, the imperious power-behind-the-throne who eventually wins her life-long battle for power, only to find that she rules a country no longer worth having.

Of course, the birth of the modern was not pretty and the late Victorian Age was a genuinely strange time in England. For bankers, it was a time of speculative bubbles, huge disparities in wealth and an economy that was not so much changing as mutating. For the society at large it was a time of dramatic and unstable contrasts. Follett has a nice eye for some of the more memorable contrasts evident in a time when on the North shore of the Thames gentlemen held forth in their homes of exotic new design, while in the muddy fields of the South shore “crowds of gray-faced men and ragged women were still at work boiling bones, sorting rubbish, firing kilns and pouring paste into molds to make the drainpipes and chimney pots needed by the fast-expanding city.” Follett is also particularly good at describing those unlikely venues where the various social classes did mix, such as at the enormously popular bordellos or at the “ratting” pits where both the poor and the rich wagered on bloodthirsty fights between dogs and packs of rats, with odds given on the number of surviving animals.

Not that Follett gets too carried away with such subtlety; this is a TV-camera-ready thriller after all, not “Little Dorritt” (then again, none of Follett’s characters are butchers named Mr. Cuttymeat, so score one for him). Some things in life are universal, and Follett lets us know, early and often, that carriages and hoop skirts aside, the Victorians weren’t that different from us when it comes to a fascination with sex, greed, money, sex, depravity, opulence, sex, lust, ambition, and sex, power and sex. At least there are some things you can count on.

In the end, “A Dangerous Fortune” handily surpasses most swivel-rack novels. So sit back, relax, ask the flight attendant for a pillow and let Ken Follett provide you with those same careening thrills you hope your air carrier won’t.