The scene of the story is laid on the West Coast of Africa -- the White Man's Grave -- where a renegade white man has thrown in his lot with the Arab slavers and Ju-ju lodges, and has organized African Tammany -- an underworld of graft and slaving and gun-running and gun-men. To reveal the plot would be to spoil the story, and the reader must read the book if he wants to know the answer to these questions: Who did Nina Barnet marry? Why was a gorilla kept in the Ju-ju house on the island, and what happened when Nina was handed over to it? Did Cassalis finally pay the penalty for his crimes, and if not, why not? Beloved of Ishmael is a love story quite as much as a tale of adventure and intrigue in the tropics. As in the author's previous books, the characters are flesh and blood. V. M. Steele has again written a thriller that is out of the ordinary run of thrillers.