LEAP FOR THE SUN

Multiple cross-purposes bloom in Buranda, the African police state ruled by the giant black tyrant Toga Tambo (read Idi Amin), a sensualist who spends as much time drinking brandy fizzes and deflowering virgins as he does ordering the deaths of enemies. Tambo took over Buranda from the ruling Asian community and cast out the Asians. Now they want Dick McGovern to act as a mercenary for them. But the British Foreign Office has an assignment for him. And the usurping Buranda military faction has its uses for him. And all McGovern wants is to dig up a rich hoard of golden treasure from an ancient tomb before Tambo's new dam fills over the treasure site with a vast new lake, and perhaps save his archaeologist brother who is Tambo's prisoner--but about that McGovern's not knocking himself out. Brisk and vicious intrigue, dominated by paranoid bull Tambo--but still only another link of spy sausage with a hero modeled (probably not even consciously, he's such a clichÉ figure) on Richard Button's angry young Osborne.