This was published by Heinemann in 1975 at £3.50. The US edition by William Morrow & Co. appeared in 1976. There was a BCA replica edition in 1976 and a Pan paperback in 1977.
This is a typical late period Canning. It is more of a love story and character study than a conventional thriller. It starts slowly, but the second half of the book is gripping. Once you accept the rather far-fetched initial circumstances, the plot development is very plausible.
Seventeen-year-old Carlo Graber, whose alcoholic English mother and Swiss banker father have recently died, comes with his aunt Grace Lindsay to stay in a wing of Darlock House in Devon, which they have rented from John Kingsford, a country squire who has just lost his seat in Parliament and his wife in a traffic accident. Kingsford fills his time by transcribing the diaries of his great-grandfather, "Parson John", dating from the 1870s.
We learn that Carlo's mother had visited Darlock House eighteen years ago, and has told Carlo that he is John Kingsford's son. Carlo is told of a ritual called the Kingsford Run, a 20-mile cross country course, that all male Kingsfords are expected to undertake. Carlo starts to train, hoping to beat or equal John Kingsford's time of 2 hours and 38 minutes. When he achieves this, he will disclose himself to his "father". Meanwhile a romance is developing between him and a local farmer's daughter known as "Birdie".
John Kingsford finds an entry in the diary which leads him to a secret drawer in a piece of furniture. He opens it to discover love-letters written to his wife, revealing that for the last five years he has been cuckolded by Sir Charles Read, the Foreign Secretary, and that any political success he has had was a pay back for his wife's sexual favours. Kingsford decides to take revenge. Unknown to him, Carlo, whose hobby is picking locks and reading private letters, has worked out what is going on, and may decide to join in.
This is not a Birdcage book, but the authority figures, Wardle and Grainger, have a great deal in common with the Birdcage secret department which features in most of the other thrillers Canning wrote in the 1970s and '80s.
 First edition |
 US first edition |
 Pan paperback |
 US paperback |
 US paperback |
| Index of characters, locations and themes | ||||