Books: Something of Value

THE LEOPARD (159 pp.)—Victor Stafford Reid—Viking ($3).

At the present literary rate of exchange, one African safari equals roughly one novel about Mau Mau trouble. Most such books shine only a feeble light into an area where burning racial hatred has obscured the underlying questions of right and wrong—or else they glare with a Ruark-like, eyewitness sensationalism. It may be a virtue of The Leopard that its author, Victor Reid, has never been in Africa.

Novelist Reid is a Jamaican journalist; his only other novel. New Day, reflected the color and sensuousness of his native Caribbean island. What he has tried for in...