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Collier Spymasters
Mask of Memory
Isolation and boredom can do strange things to people. After years and years of too much time on her hands, lonely housewife Margaret Tucker's mundane routine becomes smattered with odd behaviour.Her husband, Bernard, is cold and distant. Spending most of his time in London with only infrequent visits back to the marital home, Margaret knows nothing about her husband's other life and has been all but discarded by the man she once loved.When Margaret starts losing periods of time and cannot recall her actions she knows things have got to change. But just as she is beginning to rediscover herself, her husband's mysterious life once again collides with hers . . .'Compulsive Canning' "Yorkshire Post"'Espionage with a twist . . . written with sensitivity and underlying menace' "New York Times"'Brilliant characterisation . . . depicts the earthy love affair of the lonely wife of a government Security Chief who is involved with the struggle between the trade unions and the State . . . far more than a thriller' "Birmingham Post"'Very superior spy-story on two levels' "Observer"'Mesmerically readable' "Guardian"
236 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
2 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Victor Canning
161 books58 followersVictor Canning was a prolific writer of novels and thrillers who flourished in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, but whose reputation has faded since his death in 1986. He was personally reticent, writing no memoirs and giving relatively few newspaper interviews.
Canning was born in Plymouth, Devon, the eldest child of a coach builder, Fred Canning, and his wife May, née Goold. During World War I his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders, while he with his two sisters went to live in the village of Calstock ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railways and later became station master. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid 1920s they moved to Oxford where his father had found work, and Victor attended the Oxford Central School. Here he was encouraged to stay on at school and go to university by a classical scholar, Dr. Henderson, but the family could not afford it and instead Victor went to work as a clerk in the education office at age 16.
Within three years he had started selling short stories to boys’ magazines and in 1934, his first novel. Mr. Finchley Discovers his England, was accepted by Hodder and Stoughton and became a runaway best seller. He gave up his job and started writing full time, producing thirteen more novels in the next six years under three different names. Lord Rothermere engaged him to write for the Daily Mail, and a number of his travel articles for the Daily Mail were collected as a book with illustrations by Leslie Stead under the title Everyman's England in 1936. He also continued to write short stories.
He married Phyllis McEwen in 1935, a girl from a theatrical family whom he met while she was working with a touring vaudeville production at Weston-super-Mare. They had three daughters, Lindel born in 1939, Hilary born in 1940, and Virginia who was born in 1942, but died in infancy.
In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. Canning worked in anti-aircraft batteries in the south of England until early 1943, when he was sent to North Africa and took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian campaigns. At the end of the war he was assigned to an Anglo-American unit doing experimental work with radar range-finding. It was top secret work but nothing to do with espionage, though Canning never discouraged the assumption of publishers and reviewers that his espionage stories were partly based on experience. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major.
He resumed writing with The Chasm (1947), a novel about identifying a Nazi collaborator who has hidden himself in a remote Italian village. A film of this was planned but never finished. Canning’s next book, Panther’s Moon, was filmed as Spy Hunt, and from now on Canning was established as someone who could write a book a year in the suspense genre, have them reliably appear in book club and paperback editions on both sides of the Atlantic, be translated into the main European languages, and in many cases get filmed. He himself spent a year in Hollywood working on scripts for movies of his own books and on TV shows. The money earned from the film of The Golden Salamander (filmed with Trevor Howard) meant that Canning could buy a substantial country house with some land in Kent, Marle Place, where he lived for nearly twenty years and where his daughter continues to live now. From the mid 1950s onwards his books became more conventional, full of exotic settings, stirring action sequences and stock characters. In 1965 he began a series of four books featuring a private detective called Rex Carver, and these were among his most successful in sales terms.
He died in 1986.
Canning was born in Plymouth, Devon, the eldest child of a coach builder, Fred Canning, and his wife May, née Goold. During World War I his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders, while he with his two sisters went to live in the village of Calstock ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railways and later became station master. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid 1920s they moved to Oxford where his father had found work, and Victor attended the Oxford Central School. Here he was encouraged to stay on at school and go to university by a classical scholar, Dr. Henderson, but the family could not afford it and instead Victor went to work as a clerk in the education office at age 16.
Within three years he had started selling short stories to boys’ magazines and in 1934, his first novel. Mr. Finchley Discovers his England, was accepted by Hodder and Stoughton and became a runaway best seller. He gave up his job and started writing full time, producing thirteen more novels in the next six years under three different names. Lord Rothermere engaged him to write for the Daily Mail, and a number of his travel articles for the Daily Mail were collected as a book with illustrations by Leslie Stead under the title Everyman's England in 1936. He also continued to write short stories.
He married Phyllis McEwen in 1935, a girl from a theatrical family whom he met while she was working with a touring vaudeville production at Weston-super-Mare. They had three daughters, Lindel born in 1939, Hilary born in 1940, and Virginia who was born in 1942, but died in infancy.
In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. Canning worked in anti-aircraft batteries in the south of England until early 1943, when he was sent to North Africa and took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian campaigns. At the end of the war he was assigned to an Anglo-American unit doing experimental work with radar range-finding. It was top secret work but nothing to do with espionage, though Canning never discouraged the assumption of publishers and reviewers that his espionage stories were partly based on experience. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major.
He resumed writing with The Chasm (1947), a novel about identifying a Nazi collaborator who has hidden himself in a remote Italian village. A film of this was planned but never finished. Canning’s next book, Panther’s Moon, was filmed as Spy Hunt, and from now on Canning was established as someone who could write a book a year in the suspense genre, have them reliably appear in book club and paperback editions on both sides of the Atlantic, be translated into the main European languages, and in many cases get filmed. He himself spent a year in Hollywood working on scripts for movies of his own books and on TV shows. The money earned from the film of The Golden Salamander (filmed with Trevor Howard) meant that Canning could buy a substantial country house with some land in Kent, Marle Place, where he lived for nearly twenty years and where his daughter continues to live now. From the mid 1950s onwards his books became more conventional, full of exotic settings, stirring action sequences and stock characters. In 1965 he began a series of four books featuring a private detective called Rex Carver, and these were among his most successful in sales terms.
He died in 1986.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 5, 2021
I do like Victor Canning’s books, in particular the way he seems to describe places I know well (in this case North Devon) or would like to visit. This thriller, set against the background of the miner’s strike and the three day week (a McGuffin regarding important papers), is centred on the coast around the Taw and Torridge estuaries with honourable mentions for Barnstaple and Braunton Burrows where I used to birdwatch in the mid 1970s when this book was written.
Bernard Tucker works high up in one of those shady government departments where tough decisions are made about dealing with potential political insurrection and civil disobedience. Tucker reads reports and précis are sent upstairs and plans quietly made to sort out the troublemakers. He lives a necessarily secretive existence but is dissatisfied with subterfuge and longs to relive the glory of his wartime naval exploits.
His wife is equally dissatisfied and ekes out her life longing for some human warmth and companionship. Their dysfunctional relationship leads to major complications at about page 115 prior to which this was quite a routine read, the characters being universally unsympathetic. However patience is rewarded by a cracking second half (actually a police procedural).
Bernard Tucker works high up in one of those shady government departments where tough decisions are made about dealing with potential political insurrection and civil disobedience. Tucker reads reports and précis are sent upstairs and plans quietly made to sort out the troublemakers. He lives a necessarily secretive existence but is dissatisfied with subterfuge and longs to relive the glory of his wartime naval exploits.
His wife is equally dissatisfied and ekes out her life longing for some human warmth and companionship. Their dysfunctional relationship leads to major complications at about page 115 prior to which this was quite a routine read, the characters being universally unsympathetic. However patience is rewarded by a cracking second half (actually a police procedural).
April 4, 2025
Update 2025: This is one of my stand-out books that I've been going through and marking favorite and adding an update to my reviews because they have stood the test of time by staying with me in terms of actually remembering the plots and the pleasure of reading them!
Not only is this book well-plotted; filled with well-drawn characters in suitable settings and written smoothly in descriptive and active language, the characters grow and change and there's a theme to it, rare in the spy and mystery genre.
At first I didn't think I was going to like it due to the way the men treat Margaret, the central character, but it is so well-written and captivating, that I stuck with it and I was amply rewarded. This would have made a great Alfred Hitchcock movie--his use of Canning's The Rainbird Pattern as the basis for Family Plot alerted me to this author. I would love to see this filmed!
Not only is this book well-plotted; filled with well-drawn characters in suitable settings and written smoothly in descriptive and active language, the characters grow and change and there's a theme to it, rare in the spy and mystery genre.
At first I didn't think I was going to like it due to the way the men treat Margaret, the central character, but it is so well-written and captivating, that I stuck with it and I was amply rewarded. This would have made a great Alfred Hitchcock movie--his use of Canning's The Rainbird Pattern as the basis for Family Plot alerted me to this author. I would love to see this filmed!
June 17, 2025
Decent 1970s English thriller. A very enjoyable read this.
October 25, 2025
a little too ruminative and serious for my taste but well characterized and well written .More of a novel than a spy thriller .
April 27, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in May 1999.
One of Canning's better novels, The Mask of Memory is about a man who leads a double life. Bernard Tucker has two completely separate existences. In Devon, he has a wife with money of her own, still good-looking but neglected by him; she basically lives alone with him as an occasional visitor. Eventually she meets another man, and reaches the point when she is ready to leave her husband. She tells him when he next visits; he isn't happy about it (more because of the background of the other man than because he wants to stay with her himself), but later that same day he is discovered dead, having apparently slipped and fallen while on a walk.
This is where the two strands of Bernard's life begin to come together. His job is, in fact, with the security services; at the time when he married Margaret, the men in his service were not supposed to have families. This was the original reason that he separated his life into two compartments. When he died, he was in the middle of a mission, and had gone to his Devon home to work on some papers crucial to its success. Thus, when he does not return to London, his department is somewhat concerned, particularly given the fairly remote possibilities that he may have defected to or been eliminated by the opposition.
The plot is not especially dramatic for a thriller, and Canning is thrown back on his abilities to flesh out his characters. He does this fairly successfully for Margaret and Bernard, and they are what brings interest to this novel.
One of Canning's better novels, The Mask of Memory is about a man who leads a double life. Bernard Tucker has two completely separate existences. In Devon, he has a wife with money of her own, still good-looking but neglected by him; she basically lives alone with him as an occasional visitor. Eventually she meets another man, and reaches the point when she is ready to leave her husband. She tells him when he next visits; he isn't happy about it (more because of the background of the other man than because he wants to stay with her himself), but later that same day he is discovered dead, having apparently slipped and fallen while on a walk.
This is where the two strands of Bernard's life begin to come together. His job is, in fact, with the security services; at the time when he married Margaret, the men in his service were not supposed to have families. This was the original reason that he separated his life into two compartments. When he died, he was in the middle of a mission, and had gone to his Devon home to work on some papers crucial to its success. Thus, when he does not return to London, his department is somewhat concerned, particularly given the fairly remote possibilities that he may have defected to or been eliminated by the opposition.
The plot is not especially dramatic for a thriller, and Canning is thrown back on his abilities to flesh out his characters. He does this fairly successfully for Margaret and Bernard, and they are what brings interest to this novel.
July 24, 2020
Quite the absorbing read, this forgotten spy novel that has anything but spy-jinks on its mind, a lot of the time. Margaret. Margaret and this fateful time in her life. Her secretive husband Bernard - oh, the sum of the things she doesn't know about him. Max, the man who wants to be her lover...at least, that's what he wears on the surface. Quint and Lassiter - they must discover a very important hiding place, where even more important papers have been stashed. Bill Ankers, lowlife snoop, who will grasp at any opportunity to cash in.
In the end, Margaret's, and Bernard's, and Max's shaky emotional triangle takes over the novel, above the concern about any admittedly incendiary secret documents. But the documents do affect what happens, so yes, if you want espionage with your bleak psychological study/love story, then you get that.
I thought of this book as 3.5 stars - and would never have rounded down - but the ending delivered, and I suppose it really is a solid 5 star read for me. This helps me consider even more Canning books for the future, with my disappointment over The Whip Hand now becoming a distant...memory.
In the end, Margaret's, and Bernard's, and Max's shaky emotional triangle takes over the novel, above the concern about any admittedly incendiary secret documents. But the documents do affect what happens, so yes, if you want espionage with your bleak psychological study/love story, then you get that.
I thought of this book as 3.5 stars - and would never have rounded down - but the ending delivered, and I suppose it really is a solid 5 star read for me. This helps me consider even more Canning books for the future, with my disappointment over The Whip Hand now becoming a distant...memory.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews