This first novel by screenplay writer P. J. Reece is terse, racy, and full of action. Young David Livingstone, whose name gets him lots of reaction in post-colonial Africa, steals his mother’s credit card in Vancouver Airport and flies to Tanzania. Eluding the police there, he begins a wild journey that’s both a flight from authorities and a quest to see Victoria Falls, or Smoke That Thunders, as Africans call it. The landscape of central Africa flashes by as a backdrop for one chase scene after another, as David taunts and eludes piratical tire thieves in a truck, the good-natured Highways Minister Mr. Ngoma in his Mercedes and private Cessna, an eccentric missionary priest from Chicoutimi on his bicycle, as well as local police, border guards, and a CNN news team. David’s good luck includes a sex scene with a compliant African beauty, a remarkable ability to escape unscathed from vehicle crashes, and three solo passes over Victoria Falls piloting a stolen plane on his first time at the controls of an aircraft.

This adolescent male fantasy is, fortunately, recounted with deadpan humour, and Reece’s film background is evident in his handling of fast cuts and pithy dialogue. Less successful are the attempts to give David’s escapades a motivation, in reflections on his father’s death and a conflict with his macho high school English teacher.