Overwriting is the only thing that occasionally spoils A Good Man in Africa, William Boyd's first novel, and one which is in every other respect highly controlled; Boyd is clearly a comic writer with a very successful career ahead of him. The comedy is of an Amisian cast, focusing on embarrassment and disaster, social, sexual and political. There is no room for sentiment or for the finer feelings, and social manners and political pressures only just manage to clothe and contain feelings of naked revulsion and contempt between the principal characters. The novel has a sweaty tropical setting in which dead bodies rapidly become unapproachable and live ones, even if lusted for, have a certain grotesquery. The protagonist, Morgan Leafy, is pale and fat, and in public and private life (he is First Secretary to a Deputy High Commission) he undergoes a herculean series of labours with varying...