CRACKSMAN ON VELVET

Queen Victoria's England is the scene for this saga -- more adventure than mystery -- of Sergeant William Clarence Verity of Scotland Yard's Private Clothes Detail. Verity's convinced that a military execution in India was engineered to cover up a conspiracy, and he's right, of course, eventually foiling the machinations of an elegantly sadistic safecracker who has teamed up with the master and denizens of a brothel to steal half a ton of gold bullion. The plot is all-right routine but the background has its pleasures.