First edition 1939
New edition
available from Lulu.com
characters
and scenes
This book was published by Hoder and Stoughton in 1939, the fourth that Canning wrote using the pen-name Alan Gould. It explores Dostoyevskian territory. It is a study of a murderer, not asking us to like him but at least to understand him. It starts slowly; we reach page 168, over half way, before the main action begins. However, in the end the long build-up is justified and the story is tense and the characters memorable.
Andrew Godwin, in his late twenties, is a clerk in a government office in the west country town of Sandover (roughly Burnham-on-sea from the geography described). He dreams of having enough money to buy luxuries and write full time. He notes that Albert Vines, a junior clerk that he despises, is regularly sent to cash the office's pay cheques and, on those days, is carrying £300 in cash, enough to live on for a year. Godwin speculates about murdering Vines and stealing the money, first working it out as a story and then deciding to carry the plot out.
We follow the deed itself, the investigation, the chance exposure of Godwin's crime and his desperate attempts to escape, culminating in a vivid climax as he is hunted on Exmoor. Afterwards everyone is puzzled how someone so likeable could have done such a wicked deed, and somebody pays anonymously for an In Memoriam notice in the paper every year, ending with the line "Every Creature of God is Good" (which comes from I Timothy, 4, 4).
First edition 1939 |
New edition available from Lulu.com |
Index of characters and scenes |
It is worth noting that Canning himself worked in a job very similar to the one he describes Andrew Godwin doing, but he escaped to become a successful writer, presumably without committing murder. Many passages in the book have an autobiographical ring.