A Ripley's Game Reprise: 1974 US Knopf First Edition of Patricia Highsmith's Third Tom Ripley Novel

What scant posts there have been on here of late have been to do with comics – those are, after all, what have been preoccupying me both personally and professionally over the past year or so – but I have been picking up the odd book here and there too, and among those have been a number by another perennial preoccupation of mine, Patricia Highsmith. Just the other day I came into possession of this:

An American first edition of Ripley's Game, published by Knopf in 1974, dust jacket design by Janet Halverson (whose other jackets include the 1970 and 1978 US firsts of Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt and The Human Factor, and the 1981 US first of Ross Thomas's The Mordida Man). You may recall... actually at this point I doubt anyone recalls anything I've written on Existential Ennui, but anyway: Ripley's Game, the third book in the Ripliad (soon to become a TV show, with Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley – intriguing and encouraging casting there), is not only my favourite Highsmith novel, but my favourite novel full stop, and it was the acquisition of a 1974 Heinemann first a dozen years ago (in a long-since-vanished Cecil Court bookshop) that first got me into book collecting. As such, it's a totemic book for me.

I had my eye on a Knopf first six years ago, but it slipped through my fingers (as compensation I settled instead for a 1989 Heinemann Uniform Edition). The notion of getting my filthy mitts on a Knopf (ooer) has floated in and out of my head ever since then, but just the other day it seemed the fates had finally aligned when I was in Lewes's Bow Windows Bookshop and co-proprietor (and friend of mine) Ric mentioned he'd come into possession of one as part of a box of books – mostly crime fiction and spy fiction – he'd bought from a local. Or at least he thought he had: when we looked in said box, there was no sign of Ripley's Game. Bugger.

I'd pretty much resigned myself to the fact that once again the Knopf first had eluded my grasp when two days later Ric sent me a message saying he'd found it. And it turned out that not only was it a first edition (not a later printing – the Knopf edition went through a few), but it was once owned by local author John Pearson, he of James Bond: The Authorized Biography and The Life of Ian Fleming fame.

So I'm very happy with my copy (even though the dust jacket is a little battered: the sign of a well-read book, whether by Mr. Pearson or whoever it was Ric bought it off – and quite right too), not least because it affords me the opportunity to compare the US and UK first editions. The text in the Knopf edition, which was published in May of '74, a few months after the Heinemann edition, has been Americanised, or I suppose – depending on whether Highsmith, who was American, wrote the manuscript in American English – re-Americanised: within the first few sentences, there's a "parlor game" as opposed to "parlour game" in the Heinemann edition.

The Knopf has deckled edges, as is often the case with American editions, and a red-stained top block. I also rather like the jacket flap description of Tom Ripley as "energetic, amoral, overcivilized" and "undersensitized".

Now I suppose I'll have to write something abut the other Highsmith books I've picked up – especially as they're all signed.

Denis Healey's George V. Higgins Book Collection

Every year, the East Sussex village of Alfriston – not far from the East Sussex town of Lewes, where I live and work – holds a Summer Festival. Often as not I'll pop over there on the summer bank holiday, usually on the Monday when there's also a boot sale in the playing field as well as, on the beautiful village green beside the River Cuckmere, a selection of stalls and games and rides. Best of all – and this is something I'd completely forgotten until I got there this year – there's a secondhand book stall; more of a marquee really, with tables arranged in a circle, laden with boxes stuffed with fiction and non-fiction (hardback and paperback).

Rifling through the wares this year I started to notice a number of George V. Higgins books among the selection of hardback fiction. Higgins is an author I've tried once (The Friends of Eddie Coyle, his 1972 debut) and keep meaning to return to – a noted stylist whose novels, many of them of a crime fiction bent, others of a political persuasion, are largely comprised of long stretches of dialogue, with little if any description. The more I looked in the boxes of books, the more Higgins I found. Evidently someone in Alfriston was a fan... but then I started looking inside the books, at the ownership signatures on the front endpapers of one or two of the books and, in some cases, inscriptions on title pages from Higgins himself, and realised who that fan was: former Secretary of State for Defence (1964–70), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1974–79) and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (1980–83) Denis Healey.

Healey, who passed away in 2015, and his wife Edna, who died in 2010, amassed a huge book collection over 40 years at their Alfriston home, much of which was bought by local bookshop Much Ado Books (a shop I've written about more than once on Existential Ennui), and some of which wound up in an Alfriston book sale in September (which, annoyingly, I didn't find out about until well after the fact). The collection ranged across a variety of subjects – art, photography, history, poetry, literature and, it seems, George V. Higgins.

Only a couple of the Higgins books I found on the stall had Healey ownership signatures in them, and just three were signed and inscribed by Higgins, but I bought the whole lot anyway (twelve books at a quid each) as it was almost certain they all belonged to Healey and it seemed right to keep the collection together (or at least as much of it as possible; there may have been other Higgins book bought by other folks before I got to them). According to the dated ownership signature in the earliest book I came across, a 1973 Secker & Warburg first of The Digger's Game (Higgins' second novel), Healey bought that one in 1977, and then at some point his and Higgins' paths must have crossed, judging by the warm author inscriptions in Victories (Henry Holt, 1990), Bomber's Law (Henry Holt/Owl paperback, 1994) and Swan Boats at Four (Little, Brown, 1995).

A couple of the books are association copies: a 1979 Harper & Row edition of A Year or So with Edgar, which is inscribed to Healey by Kit McMahon, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England; and a 1987 Holt edition of Outlaws, which is inscribed by political scientist Graham Allison, with a compliment slip from Libor founder Milos Zombanakis.

And on a separate book stall in the boot fair field I found a 1974 Doubleday edition of Penelope Mortimer's Long Distance, inscribed by Mortimer to Edna Healey, thanking her for "a BBC birthday".

Quite the collection all told.

Touch by Elmore Leonard: Signed Inscribed First Edition (Viking, 1988); Book Review

There's an introduction in the 1988 UK Viking first edition of Touch – and, I expect, in other editions of the book too, not least the 1987 US Arbor House first – wherein Elmore Leonard explains why it took ten years for the novel to be published. Falling in Leonard's backlist between Bandits (1987) and Freaky Deaky (1988), Touch was actually written in 1977 "and, within a couple of months, rejected by more than a dozen hardcover publishers", as Leonard puts it. "The rejections were cordial enough; there was no quarrel with the prose. One editor called it, 'Probably the best writing you have done to date.' Another said, 'It is simply that the subject, no matter how well written it is, seems altogether mystifying.'"

Though the novel was finally accepted for publication in 1978 as a paperback original, so difficult to categorise did the publisher find the book that it languished on their shelves for a few years thereafter while they tried to work out what the hell to do with the thing. Eventually Leonard requested that the rights be reverted "and the publisher complied, probably with a sigh of relief"; Leonard then sold the book to Arbor House.

Leonard seems to concur with his original (non-)publisher in his introduction to Touch when he states that the novel is "way off-trail compared to what I usually write", and in terms of subject matter at least he has a point: the story is about a former Franciscan monk, a young man named Juvenal, who apparently possesses the ability to heal the sick and who displays stigmata on his hands, feet and side whilst doing so – not exactly Swag or The Hunted or City Primeval, then. However, in tone, style, meandering plot and above all in terms of characters, Touch is unmistakably the work of the writer of Swag (1976), The Hunted (1977),  City Primeval (1980) and especially classics like The Big Bounce (1969), Unknown Man No. 89 (1977), Split Images (1981), Stick (1983) and LaBrava (1983). In other words, it's an Elmore Leonard novel, and one of his very best at that.

It's worth noting too that despite the ostensibly off-beam subject matter, in true Leonard fashion there is still a con and a potential payday driving the narrative, although it's not Juvenal who's doing the conning, nor Lynn Marie Faulkner, the spunky record promotor with whom he falls in love, though she does initially seek him out at the Sacred Heart Center – the Detroit detox clinic where he works – for precisely that reason. Instead it's a pair of prime Leonard grotesques who want to use Juvenal for their own ends: Bill Hill, a medallion-wearing (bearing the legend "Thank You, Jesus") former church leader – he administered the Uni-Faith Church, which boasted "The World's Tallest Illuminated Cross of Jesus, 117 feet high" (plus "the Pilgrims' Rest Cafeteria and Gift Shop, where they sold Heavenly Hash candy, ten-inch battery-operated replicas of the World's Tallest Illuminated Cross of Jesus, WTICOJ T-shirts...") – who, with one eye on the likes of Billy Graham and the other on the Frost/Nixon interviews, perceives a way of turning a profit on Juvenal; and August Murray, stiff-necked, clenched-arse copy shop owner and commander of the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost, who seeks to recruit Juvenal to his righteous cause.

Touch also touches on another abiding Leonard concern, especially around the period it was written (see also Unknown Man No. 89), that of alcohol abuse (the writer was a functioning alcoholic during much of the 1970s). But he's never judgemental about it, and nor is he, despite Bill Hill and August Murray's shortcomings, about the mystical or religious aspects of the story. "Touch is about accepting what is," he writes in the introduction, an attitude which would also inform his later novel, the Raylan Givens-starring Riding the Rap (1995), which features a psychic, Reverend Dawn (who also appears in 2009's Out of Sight sequel Road Dogs), about whom Leonard again offers no judgement. Certainly Juvenal's bizarre abilities seem genuine, best exemplified by a bravura midpoint scene in a church where Leonard (uncharacteristically) flits between five or six different character POVs in order to show Juvenal's miraculous power, and a climactic, brilliant, farcical TV interview conducted by a rictus grinning hairpiece-bedecked towering shit of a host which is about the best sequence I've read in a Leonard novel.

The copy of the Viking edition of Touch seen in this post (dust jacket design by Bet Ayer, jacket photo by James Walker), fairly recently acquired (and not to be confused with the copy I bought in Essex two years ago), is a signed one, inscribed by Elmore Leonard to a John Newland. I've no way of ascertaining whether that might be this John Newland, director and host of classic paranormal TV anthology series One Step Beyond, but given the subject matter of the novel, it would be rather fitting if it were (and would make my copy of the book an association one). In any case, it's a nice way to round off this current series of posts on inscribed books. I do have some more signed and inscribed books I've yet to blog about (including another Leonard one), but those will have to wait for the new year; apart from anything else, there are a couple of other Elmore Leonard books I'd like to post reviews of before I get to those.

Existential Ennui on eBay: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Point Blank and Pity Him Afterwards

At long last I've finally gone and done something I've been promising to do for bloody ages: I've listed some books for sale on eBay. All three books have featured on Existential Ennui at various points, and two of them have even featured on The Violent World of Parker too – not that either of those facts are especially salient or will make a blind bit of difference as regards determining whether or not the books sell or, if they do sell, how much they sell for, I'm sure – I mean, why should whether a book has made an appearance on a little-read blog collecting blog – and a better-read crime fiction website – and indeed sat on the shelves of the proprietor of the little-read book collecting blog for, ooh, a good few years, in any way impact its relative desirability? – but I just thought I'd mention it. Er, at length.

The books are as follows:

A first edition/impression of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton in 1974, as seen on Existential Ennui here, here and here (among other posts), eBay auction here;

A British hardback first edition/impression of Richard Stark's Point Blank, alias The Hunter, published by Allison & Busby in 1984, as seen on Existential Ennui – and, no doubt, The Violent World of Parker – all over the bloody place (I can't be fagged to find all the posts) but certainly on the British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s page, eBay auction here;

An American first edition/impression of Donald E. Westlake's Pity Him Afterwards, published in hardback by Random House in 1964, as seen on Existential Ennui here and here and The Violent World of Parker here, eBay auction here.

I suppose they're all quite obvious books in a way: better known titles (although less so in the case of Pity Him Afterwards) by authors who are firm favourites on Existential Ennui. But they're all collectable first editions of a sort, and they all have low starting prices – £4.99 in each case – so they're a good way for me to test the waters, to see if it's going to be worth my while to persist with selling on eBay. If they do well, I have other, more obscure delights waiting to be listed (not least some more Westlake books).

All three auctions finish on Sunday 8 November around 7pm, and all three are UK only affairs, I'm afraid; I may offer international shipping on future auctions (if there are future auctions), but for these initial ones I wanted to keep it simple. There's information about the condition of each book in each respective listing, but anyone looking for more details can either ask me questions on eBay itself, or post a comment below, or drop me a line on the usual Existential Ennui email address (see the contact details in the sidebar on the right) and I'll respond as swiftly as I'm able.

Author Donald MacKenzie's Crime and Spy Thrillers, 1956–1993, Feat. the Raven Series, The Kyle Contract and a Bibliography

Donald MacKenzie (1918–1993) is one of those authors who, if you're into classic and vintage crime fiction and you frequent secondhand bookshops, chances are you'll have come across at some point, and yet about whom there is scant information online – this despite, in MacKenzie's case, having published three dozen novels and two volumes of autobiography over the course of a four-decade career. (The Canadian-born MacKenzie does have a Wikipedia page, but it's in French.) So far, so unremarkable: there are scores of crime writers who, like MacKenzie, have largely slipped from the collective consciousness.

What makes MacKenzie unusual among his crime-writing brethren is that he genuinely knew of what he wrote. Those aforementioned two volumes of autobiography, Fugitives (1955, US title Occupation: Thief) and Gentlemen at Crime (1956), published at the start of his literary career, detail his prior career: as a convicted criminal – initially a confidence trickster, then a share-pusher and finally a robber.

The back of the dust jacket of the British first edition of MacKenzie's debut novel, Nowhere to Go (Elek, 1956) – which, incidentally, was made into a film by Ealing Studios in 1958 (the novel, not the dust jacket) – offers synopses of both of MacKenzie's non-fiction titles (click on the image above left to read them), while the back of the dust jacket of the British first edition of his third novel, The Scent of Danger (Collins, 1958) – the first of two books to star burglar Macbeth Bain – features an amusing potted biography (widely quoted online, invariably unattributed):

Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1908 and educated in England, Canada and Switzerland, for twenty-five years MacKenzie lived by crime in many countries. "I went to jail," he writes, "if not with depressing regularity – too often for my liking." His last sentences were five years in the United States and three years in England – and they ran concurrently. He began writing and selling stories when in an American jail and says, "I like writing and hope to keep at it till I die. I like travel, kippers, American cars, Spanish suits, ice hockey, prize fights, walking, flowers, sun, dogs, Brahms, horseback riding, settling old scores, people who like me. I don't like meat, cocktail parties, Spanish gin, policemen, most judges, talk about things I don't understand, pompous people, good losers, or writers who 'spell it out' for you.

"I try to do exactly as I like as often as possible and I don't think I'm either psychopathic, a wayward boy, a problem of our time, a charming rogue, or ever was."

MacKenzie's canon can be divided roughly into two strands: those novels which feature as their leads criminals or former criminals, including two short series (the Macbeth Bain series and the Henry Chalice/Crying Eddie series, which comprises three books); and an extended series of crime/spy thrillers starring ex-copper turned international troubleshooter John Raven. MacKenzie's writing is characterised by a noirish sensibility, an economical style and clipped, deadpan sentences.

I guess you could call him a stylist, except that he's not (in my opinion) quite up there with the likes of, say, Richard Stark or Elmore Leonard. From the little I've read of him and the contemporaneous review excerpts I've seen – where comments range from "One of the few British crime writers who investigates the psychological make-up of his characters in a convincing way... smacks not a little of Graham Greene in its mild pessimism and pathos" (Books and Bookmen on The Scent of Danger) to "The action is splendidly developed... and the climax breathless" (the Oxford Mail – probably Anthony Price then – on Night Boat to Puerto Vedra) to "A craftsman's job" (The Sun on Dead Straight) – I'd say MacKenzie was a sharp, stylish writer, but not an easy one to warm to, his novels as likely to be penned from the perspective of an unsympathetic recidivist as from that of a policeman.

For me that makes him a more interesting writer – that and his colourful background – but I suppose it might be one reason why he's less celebrated than some other classic crime writers; certainly he merits more coverage online than has heretofore been the case – hence this post and its bibliography, the most detailed and accurate yet assembled for the web (to my knowledge). Still, MacKenzie can at least claim to be currently in print, courtesy of Orion's Murder Room imprint, although the dust jackets illustrating this post are actually taken from first editions of the novels, a stack of which I acquired from book dealer Jamie Sturgeon and some of which boast handsome jacket designs by, variously, Ionicus (alias Joshua Charles Armitage; The Lonely Side of the River, Hodder, 1965), William Randell (The Scent of Danger, Collins, 1958) and Edward Pagram (Nowhere to Go and The Juryman, Elek, 1956/57; some more of his work can be seen here). I've added all three of those artists' MacKenzie wrappers to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s, which marks the debut of Ionicus and Pagram on that page. (I've also added Pagram's wrapper for the 1965 Hodder edition of Patricia Carlon's Crime of Silence, which I suddenly remembered whilst writing this post that I had sitting on my shelves.)

I also took off Jamie's hands three signed and inscribed copies of MacKenzie first editions:

Two Raven novels – Raven and the Paperhangers, published by Macmillan in 1980, dust jacket photograph by Bill Richmond (whose work also appears on the covers of books by Victor Canning, Elmore Leonard and Patricia Highsmith), and Nobody Here by That Name, published by Macmillan in 1986, dust jacket illustration by Martin White – both of which may well have been inscribed to the same two people (I can't quite make out the names; suggestions in the comments please), and:

The Kyle Contract, published by Hodder in 1971, dust jacket design uncredited but which may well be by Gordon King. A solid, compelling but sober (and sobering) standalone novel, set in California, about two ex-cons, one a failing screenwriter, attempting to put the screws on a wealthy Hollywood director who framed the screenwriter for the murder of the director's wife, the inscription in this one is rather intriguing:

It reads: "I loved her but she never knew it – Donald May '71". I wonder who the recipient of that one was...? Anyway, I've added the jackets of all three of those signed books to British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s.

NB: This post linked in the 30/10/11 Friday's Forgotten Books round-up.

Donald MacKenzie Bibliography

Standalone Novels
Nowhere to Go (Elek, 1956); US title Manhunt
The Juryman (Elek, 1957)
Dangerous Silence (Collins, 1960)
Knife Edge (Collins, 1961)
The Genial Stranger (Collins, 1962)
Double Exposure (Collins, 1963); US title I, Spy
Cool Sleeps Balaban (Collins, 1964)
The Lonely Side of the River (Hodder & Stoughton, 1965)
Three Minus Two (Hodder & Stoughton, 1968); US title The Quiet Killer
Night Boat from Puerto Vedra (Hodder & Stoughton, 1969)
The Kyle Contract (Hodder & Stoughton, 1971)
Postscript to a Dead Letter (Macmillan, 1973)
The Spreewald Collection (Macmillan, 1975)
Deep, Dark and Dead (Macmillan, 1978)
The Last of the Boatriders (Macmillan, 1981)

Macbeth Bain Series
The Scent of Danger (Collins, 1958); US title Moment of Danger
Dead Straight (Hodder & Stoughton, 1968)

Henry Chalice and Crying Eddie Series
Salute from a Dead Man (Hodder & Stoughton, 1966)
Death Is a Friend (Hodder & Stoughton, 1967)
Sleep Is for the Rich (Macmillan, 1971); paperback title The Chalice Caper

John Raven Series
Zaleski's Percentage (Macmillan, 1974)
Raven in Flight (Macmillan, 1976)
Raven and the Ratcatcher (Macmillan, 1977)
Raven and the Kamikaze (Macmillan, 1977)
Raven Feathers His Nest (Macmillan, 1980); US title Raven After Dark
Raven Settles a Score (Macmillan, 1979)
Raven and the Paperhangers (Macmillan, 1980)
Raven's Revenge (Macmillan, 1982)
Raven's Longest Night (Macmillan, 1984)
Raven's Shadow (Macmillan, 1984)
Nobody Here by That Name (Macmillan, 1986)
A Savage State of Grace (Macmillan, 1988)
By Any Illegal Means (Macmillan, 1989)
Loose Cannon (Macmillan, 1991)
The Eyes of the Goat (Macmillan, 1992)
The Sixth Deadly Sin (Macmillan, 1993)

Non-fiction
Fugitives (Elek, 1955); US title Occupation: Thief
Gentlemen at Crime (Elek, 1956)

NB: Some sources credit MacKenzie with another two novels: Harrier! (Granada, 1983) and Thunderbolt! (Panther, 1984); however, according to Steve Holland those were actually penned pseudonymously by Christopher Priest.

Big Morning Blues by Gordon Williams (Hodder, 1974): Signed and Inscribed First Edition

Authors inscribe books to all sorts of people and for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they inscribe them for fans, to add a personal touch; sometimes they inscribe them to friends or confidants, to associates, acquaintances or correspondents, to family or loved ones. Sometimes they inscribe them to fellow writers and their spouses, to journalists, interviewers, filmmakers and, yes, bloggers. They might inscribe them to folk who've helped them in some way with that book or with their career – to their publisher or editor, their translator or again some friends – or who they've worked with in film or TV – a co-writer maybe, or an actress. Or they might inscribe a book with the express intention of seeing that book turned into a television series, as is the case with this one:

Big Morning Blues by Gordon Williams, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1974, dust jacket design by Jeff Godwin, who I'm guessing is Jefferson Godwin, designer of the jacket for the 1973 Hodder edition of Brian Garfield's Death Wish; in any case, I've added Godwin's jacket for Big Morning Blues to British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s, even though the novel's not so much a thriller as an evocation of London's hard-drinking underworld, or "The Rookery", as the story has it (reviews here and here).

Williams is probably best known these days as the writer of The Siege of Trencher's Farm (1969), filmed by Sam Peckinpah in 1971 as Straw Dogs, but he has well over a dozen other novels to his credit, including The Man Who Had Power Over Women (1967), which was filmed in 1970, and four novels co-written with football manager Terry Venables, three of them a series (published by Macmillan from 1974–76 under Williams and Venables' joint pen name, P. B. Yuill) starring cockney private eye James Hazell which begat an ITV show, Hazell, in 1978.

Evidently Williams imagined Big Morning Blues had telly potential too, because this copy of the book – which I acquired from book dealer Jamie Sturgeon – has the following inscription on the half-title page:

The inscription reads:

Dear Jacky,

Could you read this quickly with a view to making an offer for network dramatisation?

Best wishes,

Gordon

I've not been able to work out who "Jacky" is – Williams's agent? A television producer? – but I don't believe the novel ever did make it onto the telly (at least not according to IMDB). Unlike the next inscribed book I'll be blogging about: a 1967 spy thriller by a writer who was instrumental in the rebirth of Hammer Films.

The 100 Kilo Club by Simon Gandolfi: Signed Inscribed First Edition (Wildwood House, 1975)

Following on from that signed and inscribed association copy of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Under Water I blogged about last week, I thought I'd post a bunch more inscribed books, all of them relatively recently acquired. Some are books by authors I've been well into for a while and have written about on Existential Ennui before; some are by authors I've discovered in the last year or so and who consequently will be making their Existential Ennui debuts; one or two are association copies, i.e. inscribed to notable folk associated with the author or to fellow writers; and some simply sport inscriptions which are in some way intriguing. Like this book:

The 100 Kilo Club by Simon Gandolfi, published by Wildwood House in 1975, dust jacket design by Richard Ward – said dust jacket now added to the British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s gallery, being, as it is, a classic of the form (briefcase, banknotes – rolled into spliffs in this instance – and a small stack of cannabis resin, no less). The story of an international game of cat-and-mouse between FBI agent Patrick Nolan and a dope dealer named Pleasure, it was Gandolfi's second novel, following 1965's Even with the Shutters Closed. He went on to pen five spy thrillers in collaboration with Alistair MacLean – the Trent series, published from 1992 to 2000 – and more recently a travelogue, Old Man on a Bike, detailing his own exploits as a septuagenarian motorcyclist making his way across South America. Indeed it's his peripatetic inclinations which seem to have inspired the inscription in this copy of The 100 Kilo Club.

It reads: "For Nick and Sue in loving memory of eight hundred fleas, one couch, one dog and a French au pere [sic]." As tantalising as that is, though, just as curious is what's written on the rear endpaper, possibly even in the same hand:

A telephone number for La Fonda on the Plaza hotel in Santa Fe. Make of all that what you will.*

I bought this copy of The 100 Kilo Club off book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, one of a handful of inscribed books I've acquired from Jamie over the past six months (typically at the Lewes Book Fair), some of which I'll be showcasing down the line. Whether or not I'll ever get round to reading this one is a moot point, but I have read the next inscribed book I'll be blogging about: a 1958 spy thriller written under a pen name by Peter George.

* Or simply read the comments to this post.

The Mask of Memory by Victor Canning (Heinemann, 1974): Birdcage Book #3; Review

NB: Included in Friday's Forgotten Books, 20/2/15 (thanks, Sergio).

When is a series not a series? Or rather, where is the line between a series, and a not-series? If, three books into what one has been reliably informed is a series centring on a nefarious Whitehall department, there have been no recurring characters, no nods to the events of the two prior novels, and the activities of that nefarious Whitehall department – which is variously referred to as "the department" and "the Department" (even in the course of a single book), leading one to doubt whether it's the same department (or Department) at all – range from penny-pinching to blackmail to genuine defence of the realm, does the purported series still qualify as a series?

Answer: possibly. Or rather: yes and no. Thus far I've only read the first three of Victor Canning's Birdcage spy novels – Firecrest (1971), The Rainbird Pattern (1972) and, most recently, The Mask of Memory, which was published by Heinemann in 1974 under a dust jacket bearing a Bill Richmond photo (which, naturally, I've added to the Existential Ennui British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s page) – so I'm not about to quibble with Canning and Birdcage aficionado John Higgins when he asserts that Birdcage is a series; but I do wonder whether Victor Canning himself was aware he was writing a series by the time he got to The Mask of Memory. Because it seems to me it's just as likely, whatever evidence later (unread, by me, as yet) Birdcage books may present to the contrary, that he was simply using the notion of a nefarious Whitehall department as a peg on which to hang explorations of those perennial espionage fiction themes, love and betrayal.

In the case of The Mask of Memory, it's actually a love and betrayal triangle, between Department second-in-command Bernard Tucker; his neglected, depressed, shoplifting wife Margaret, Bernard's marriage to whom – indeed her entire existence – Bernard has kept a secret from the Department for years; and Maxie Dougall, a third-rate artist who ekes a living flogging rubbish paintings to tourists, and who sets his sights on Margaret as a potential sugar momma. But there's an additional form of betrayal too, in the shape of the papers that Bernard has been tasked by his Department boss, Percy Warboys (at the direction of the Prime Minister), with retrieving and assessing – papers that, if they turn out to be genuine, would deal a fatal blow to the credibility of the left wing trade union movement ahead of the looming general election.

It's worth dwelling a moment on that political espionage plot, because at a remove of over forty years it's easy to overlook what a timely, if not prescient, novel The Mask of Memory must have been. 1974 was a tumultuous year for Britain, with the introduction of the Three-Day Week followed by two general elections, so Canning's references to newspaper strikes and trade union unrest, and his scenario of a (presumably) Conservative PM seeking to undermine the unions, have more than a whiff of the then-zeitgeist about them. Where his own sympathies lay I wouldn't care to conjecture, but writing, I would guess, in 1973 he was clearly vexed by events unfolding around him, as evidenced by a monologue from Warboys late in the novel:

"The position is absolutely clear. It is as near a certainty as makes no difference that there will be an election early in the New Year. And this time – and not before time – the lines of battle will be drawn up so that there will only be one choice before the electorate. Is a democratic government going to control this country or is the future of the county going to be in the hands of the trades unions and their ability to impose their will by industrial power? Forget all the nonsense of who controls the trades unions. It is the power of the State against the power of organised labour. Either government by law, or the rule of force by workers' organisations led by militants whose real purpose is plain anarchy – no matter what fancy political name they choose to give it."

Fascinating as all this is, though, what really drives the novel, as with Firecrest and The Rainbird Pattern (and The Finger of Saturn for that matter), are affairs of the heart – or, more accurately, the heartless in the cases of Bernard and Maxie, at least for the majority of the story; there are revelations about the true feelings of both men late in the day (revelations which furnish the novel with a relatively upbeat ending). Perhaps more than that linking Whitehall department – or Department – and certainly more so than Canning's curious preoccupation with the workings of the mind – blackouts and memory loss here, hypnotism and clairvoyance in, respectively, Firecrest and The Rainbird Pattern – it's the author's singular take on those themes of love and betrayal which lends the series its particular character and appeal, and which ultimately makes The Mask of Memory as fine a piece of fiction, in my view, as either of its distinguished forebears.