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The Rainbird Pattern
This is a split-level story with two people kidnapping prominent officials, while at the same time, an elderly woman is trying to bring the missing elements of her family together before she dies. There seems no connection, but, as a lovable and charismatic psychic and her jack-of-all-trades partner seek the whereabouts of a man who disappeared years ago, the suspense mounts and culminates in violence, with the author delivering an unexpected aftershock in the final pages.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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248 people want to read
About the author
Victor Canning
163 books59 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 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 5, 2017
I liked this book very much although not quite as much as Firecrest by the same author, which I had read the week before. Firecrest has a dark, brooding, foreboding atmosphere that appealed to me; by contrast, the current volume feels somewhat lighter and frothier although admittedly it's far from jaunty.
In The Rainbird Pattern, Victor Canning uses that well-worn narrative device of introducing two seemingly unconnected story lines and then colliding them in the book's final chapters. As I say, I've read books written along similar lines although, when done well (as is certainly the case here), it can be a very effective device. A man known only as 'Trader' has kidnapped two Opposition MPs and extracted a ransom in diamonds each time from the government. The authorities believe that he is working up to something much bigger, but don't know where and when he will strike next.
Meanwhile, Miss Grace Rainbird, an elderly and very wealthy woman, is nearing the end of her life. Disturbed by troubling dreams, she enlists the help of a medium called Blanche Tyler. Grace's sister, Harriet, has appeared to her in a dream, concerned about the fate of her illegitimate son, a boy called Edward Shoebridge who was given up for adoption shortly after his birth. Miss Rainbird intends to use Blanche to track down the 'boy' (now a man in his thirties) to see if he might be suitable as an heir.
The story proceeds on its merry way. The 'Department' try to establish Trader's identity, without any luck (I could have done with a bit more attention being focused on this fascinating part of the story). Blanche's friend George Lumley has rather more luck: after a series of entertainingly picaresque adventures in the company of his dog, Albert, he manages to track down the whereabouts of Edward Shoebridge and passes the information on to Blanche. This is when the two strands of the story collide, with devastating consequences for most of the principals.
As with Firecrest, Victor Canning writes very well, with a wry wit and in a satisfyingly detailed and plausible fashion. I found Miss Rainbird and Blanche a bit overdone and unsympathetic, and the space devoted to their séances could perhaps have been more profitably filled with information about the Department's search for Trader. (I seem to have read a lot about séances and mediums in the past and find such material a bit tiresome.) On the other hand, George is a memorable and likeable creation and the minor characters are good too. I suppose the trouble with these tense, slow-building thrillers (both Eric Ambler and Nigel Balchin wrote several books along broadly similar lines) is that the conclusion has to be devastatingly good in order to justify the painstaking build-up. The crescendo to The Rainbird Pattern is very good but perhaps needed to be better and it was all over too quickly for my liking. However, this is a fine novel and I certainly intend to read more of Canning's works as the year unfolds.
In The Rainbird Pattern, Victor Canning uses that well-worn narrative device of introducing two seemingly unconnected story lines and then colliding them in the book's final chapters. As I say, I've read books written along similar lines although, when done well (as is certainly the case here), it can be a very effective device. A man known only as 'Trader' has kidnapped two Opposition MPs and extracted a ransom in diamonds each time from the government. The authorities believe that he is working up to something much bigger, but don't know where and when he will strike next.
Meanwhile, Miss Grace Rainbird, an elderly and very wealthy woman, is nearing the end of her life. Disturbed by troubling dreams, she enlists the help of a medium called Blanche Tyler. Grace's sister, Harriet, has appeared to her in a dream, concerned about the fate of her illegitimate son, a boy called Edward Shoebridge who was given up for adoption shortly after his birth. Miss Rainbird intends to use Blanche to track down the 'boy' (now a man in his thirties) to see if he might be suitable as an heir.
The story proceeds on its merry way. The 'Department' try to establish Trader's identity, without any luck (I could have done with a bit more attention being focused on this fascinating part of the story). Blanche's friend George Lumley has rather more luck: after a series of entertainingly picaresque adventures in the company of his dog, Albert, he manages to track down the whereabouts of Edward Shoebridge and passes the information on to Blanche. This is when the two strands of the story collide, with devastating consequences for most of the principals.
As with Firecrest, Victor Canning writes very well, with a wry wit and in a satisfyingly detailed and plausible fashion. I found Miss Rainbird and Blanche a bit overdone and unsympathetic, and the space devoted to their séances could perhaps have been more profitably filled with information about the Department's search for Trader. (I seem to have read a lot about séances and mediums in the past and find such material a bit tiresome.) On the other hand, George is a memorable and likeable creation and the minor characters are good too. I suppose the trouble with these tense, slow-building thrillers (both Eric Ambler and Nigel Balchin wrote several books along broadly similar lines) is that the conclusion has to be devastatingly good in order to justify the painstaking build-up. The crescendo to The Rainbird Pattern is very good but perhaps needed to be better and it was all over too quickly for my liking. However, this is a fine novel and I certainly intend to read more of Canning's works as the year unfolds.
September 10, 2020
Why is this book so little known? Why is the author so little known? Only one of my friends thought that she had heard the name but had not read anything by him. This is brilliant book that is crying out to be better known. Canning incidentally wrote about 40 novels!
However, let me start at the beginning. I recently saw Alfred Hitchcock's "Family Plot" - a film I had seen and enjoyed before. Afterwards I wondered how much it followed the novel and how certain scenes would have been in writing, since somewhere along the way I had learnt that the book is set in England while the film's location is America. Only then I focused on the name of Victor Canning that I had not heard of before, ordered the book. So here I am, carrying visual images from the film in my head, but writing about the novel. And boy, are they different!
I don't want to give anything away but the novel is deeper, as suggested by the title. It is about heredity - a pattern. It is also about very interesting relationships - several of them. I urge you to read it. And I have ordered two more books by Canning.
However, let me start at the beginning. I recently saw Alfred Hitchcock's "Family Plot" - a film I had seen and enjoyed before. Afterwards I wondered how much it followed the novel and how certain scenes would have been in writing, since somewhere along the way I had learnt that the book is set in England while the film's location is America. Only then I focused on the name of Victor Canning that I had not heard of before, ordered the book. So here I am, carrying visual images from the film in my head, but writing about the novel. And boy, are they different!
I don't want to give anything away but the novel is deeper, as suggested by the title. It is about heredity - a pattern. It is also about very interesting relationships - several of them. I urge you to read it. And I have ordered two more books by Canning.
June 16, 2019
Muy entretenido. No conocía al autor pero me pareció bien escrito y resuelto. Novela de misterio/policial/thriller con un trasfondo de un secuestro y una ¿falsa? medium- El final no lo esperaba para nada!
June 26, 2018
Well plotted, tense thriller. Two plots run concurrently, neither apparently having anything to do with each other, It is great to see how they come together. Characters are well drawn and developed too. This was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1976 as 'Family Plot'. It was his final film. Highly recommended book.
September 6, 2019
The basis for the film “Family Plot”, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
October 27, 2014
As this 1972 novel begins, agents of the British government are making a 20,000 pound payment in uncut diamonds as ransom for a kidnapped MP, the second such kidnapping committed by “Trader”, a criminal gang whose carefully plotted crimes leave no clue as to their identity, number, or base of operations. The agents know it is only a matter of time before a third kidnapping, for much higher stakes, will take place.
Blanche Tyler, a professional psychic in Salisbury, is courting a new client, the elderly and wealthy Miss Rainbird, the last surviving member of her family. Miss Rainbird’s disturbing dreams are causing her to consider whether she should search out her late sister’s illegitimate son, given out for adoption 30 years ago, and make him her heir. To aid with any spiritual revelations that may be needed, Blanche has set her boyfriend, the feckless George Lumley, to the task of finding out as much as he can about the child and his present identity.
As Canning intersperses these two narratives, it is obvious that the hunters for the Rainbird heir and “Trader” will eventually cross paths. The novel’s plot is well constructed and builds to a satisfying climax, with a final chapter which presents several surprises that encourage a re-reading. Canning writes third person accounts from within different characters’ viewpoints, giving the reader access to their thoughts and memories, allowing him to move the story forward as he jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint. Blanche and George are well drawn, sympathetic and somewhat comic characters, and “Trader” is given an interesting motive for his crimes. The main government agent, Bush, is given a troubled marriage which one feels the author does not really care about; Bush’s purpose in the story is to hunt “Trader” and he should get on with it. There is a nicely done comic scene where Bush interviews the MPs who were previous kidnapping victims, a Laborite and a Conservative; Canning has the politics of the victims determine what they remember and how they interpret it.
Blanche Tyler, a professional psychic in Salisbury, is courting a new client, the elderly and wealthy Miss Rainbird, the last surviving member of her family. Miss Rainbird’s disturbing dreams are causing her to consider whether she should search out her late sister’s illegitimate son, given out for adoption 30 years ago, and make him her heir. To aid with any spiritual revelations that may be needed, Blanche has set her boyfriend, the feckless George Lumley, to the task of finding out as much as he can about the child and his present identity.
As Canning intersperses these two narratives, it is obvious that the hunters for the Rainbird heir and “Trader” will eventually cross paths. The novel’s plot is well constructed and builds to a satisfying climax, with a final chapter which presents several surprises that encourage a re-reading. Canning writes third person accounts from within different characters’ viewpoints, giving the reader access to their thoughts and memories, allowing him to move the story forward as he jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint. Blanche and George are well drawn, sympathetic and somewhat comic characters, and “Trader” is given an interesting motive for his crimes. The main government agent, Bush, is given a troubled marriage which one feels the author does not really care about; Bush’s purpose in the story is to hunt “Trader” and he should get on with it. There is a nicely done comic scene where Bush interviews the MPs who were previous kidnapping victims, a Laborite and a Conservative; Canning has the politics of the victims determine what they remember and how they interpret it.
April 10, 2021
[There are some spoilers scattered in this review.]
* * *
quote:: "If the decision had been left to Grandison it would have been different. Other people's deaths were commonplace. The thought of his own held no concern for him. Whenever it was ordained it would come. Bush knew his philosophy well. Meet threats with thrusts and send messages of condolences to the families of innocent casualties. There is no sanity in any community, no true safety, the moment you acknowledge the imperatives of any tyranny, large or small. The world had got to learn that it was better to die than to be dishonoured, that evil could not be expunged either by prayer or payment." end of quote (page 11)
* * *
During another surge of interest for Hitchcock's biography I got again reminded that Hitch's last movie was made upon this novel. (I also purchased David Freeman's memories "The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock" not least because it includes complete script for never-to-be-filmed "The Short Night".)
I had read that the movie is much funnier and more lighthearted than the novel, which is "dark". I watched the film many times, so I finally checked the book.
Canning is one of many British spies, war pilots, artillerists, patriots - who became great writers (Greene, Ambler, Le Carre, Forsyth, Dahl...),
I couldn't help seeing Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, William Devane, and that's probably why Bolaño had said "read classic and old book unless they got transferred to film". Canning described Blanche Tyler and George Lumley quite differently (I would imagine Kim Basinger and Nick Nolte at their picks as ideal, at least physically.)
The quote from the beginning of this review (and of the novel) shows above mentioned dark side of the book. In that way are good guys reasoning, Grandison and Bush, two men from "Department", secret police that does not officially exist, and is mocked and hated by ordinary police. Also the bad guy Edward Shoebridge, "the Trader" has similar stoic philosophy with reconciliation with his own death: he despises modern world, the pollution, lack of character and omnipresent corruption, so he with his second wife begins a holy war against such fallen world by kidnapping important people so as to get ransoms in diamonds. Goal is - to get enough so as to purchase a piece of land, put a high fence around it and make a Camelot for them and his son from previous marriage. Both father and son are ascetic, taciturn, avid practitioners of falconry and for couple of chapters the reader is misled that one falcon feather might lead to the discovery of Shoebridge's fortress.
But until the half of the novel we do not know whether Shoebridges exists, that is we do not know that Edward Showbridge is the Trader.
The omniscient narrator is telling two combined story lines - about the agony of "the Department's good guya" - Grandison, Bush and Sangwill - and about the couple: Blanche Tyler, the psychic, and her boyfriend George Lumley, a bloke whose specialty is not to achieve success in each business he starts. Blanche seems she found golden min in a gullible old woman, Mrs Rainbird, who suffer from bad dreams in which her late sister accuses her of something. It turns out that old woman might have a nephew to which she wishes to leave a considerable legacy.
There are some funny part in description of not always smooth relationship between Blanche and George.
These two story lines are given as in parallel editing. We read about the Trader's kidnappings and about George's private investigating, since it's what he does - that way he helps his girlfriend Blanche to "see" things.
"The Department" consists of the men of integrity. Chef Grandison, ambitious Bush (around 37, same age as Edward Shoebridge and George Lumley as we learn later) and computer guy Sangwill.
In retrospect it's amazing how Canning was prophetic in his thoughts on pollution of the Earth (although through bad guy's mouth) and use of computers.
Not before the half of the novel reader learns that Edward Shoebridge is the Trader.
The reader was hereby told who is culprit, and the rest is the continuation of the description of intelligence procedure with obvious sympathy and rooting for Bush.
The movie's easiness reduces the novel on the twist: Shoebridge couple is kidnapping important people to earn the money for their Camelot whilst they simply can receive the legacy from old Mrs. Rainbird.
In the novel it turnes out that Edward Shoebridge knew all the time that he was nephew of old Mrs. Rainbird but he had loathed her and the family ever since he had found out that he was given for adoption since he was born out of wedlock.
Blanche Tyler is murdered in the nove and it was staged as suicide. And after that I thought that George Lumley will, too, be killed when he recklessly came to the crime scene so to speak, when he rang the bell of Shoebridge's lair to ask for the Blanche whose death was pronounced suicide (Shoebridges made it look that way with a hose and a muffler etc; and when police found out that Blanche had suicide history in the family it was easy to settle with the verdict "suicide".) When George was sitting in Shoebridge's house and drinking "already second cup of tea", I expected to read "now their faces got blurred in front of his eyes...", but they let him go and so "the Deparment" easily discovered them. More logical was for Shoebridges to eliminate also George. Even if this time the should have to hide the body instead of staging another suicide in such a short period. It would have created a little bit technical problems for writer - how will the Department find the lead to Shoenridge's house, but there was another talking head, Mr. Angers, who would certainly appear and tell that he had given Shoebridge's address ti Blanche. It would jave taken no more than two extra chapters to achieve that.
In the movie both George and Blanche survived in happy ending.
The novel is indeed dark with denial of happy ending. The novel says "no, the battle between the evil and the good isn't finished in spite of that good guys caught the culprits (and even executed them with no trial!) since the son, adopted anyway by naive Mrs. Rainbird, was just a "sleeper". He had known of kidnappings all the time, he kills old Mrs. Rainbird (he disgusted her "he felt smell of sherry through her nostrils"...) and vows vengeance on the rest who caused his father's death - on George, Bush, Grandison...
The book is both cynical and insightful, more like Simenon and de Maupassant in the description of "small men" and merciless like le Carre in description of power of secret police and the mechanism of pure intelligence procedure (which is 90% a desk work) . Hitchcock had put emphasis on fun and the twist that hard boiled criminal could gotten easy money. He almost completely left out the work of "the Department". In addition he transferred the plot from rainy, gloomy and windy English countryside to sunny and glamorous California.
That parody of car chase and extra character played by Ed Lauter in the movie were written by Ernest Lehman, upon Hitchcock's insistence.
The novel is a bitter fun, sometimes disturbing, but thoroughly entertaining.
* * *
quote:: "If the decision had been left to Grandison it would have been different. Other people's deaths were commonplace. The thought of his own held no concern for him. Whenever it was ordained it would come. Bush knew his philosophy well. Meet threats with thrusts and send messages of condolences to the families of innocent casualties. There is no sanity in any community, no true safety, the moment you acknowledge the imperatives of any tyranny, large or small. The world had got to learn that it was better to die than to be dishonoured, that evil could not be expunged either by prayer or payment." end of quote (page 11)
* * *
During another surge of interest for Hitchcock's biography I got again reminded that Hitch's last movie was made upon this novel. (I also purchased David Freeman's memories "The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock" not least because it includes complete script for never-to-be-filmed "The Short Night".)
I had read that the movie is much funnier and more lighthearted than the novel, which is "dark". I watched the film many times, so I finally checked the book.
Canning is one of many British spies, war pilots, artillerists, patriots - who became great writers (Greene, Ambler, Le Carre, Forsyth, Dahl...),
I couldn't help seeing Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, William Devane, and that's probably why Bolaño had said "read classic and old book unless they got transferred to film". Canning described Blanche Tyler and George Lumley quite differently (I would imagine Kim Basinger and Nick Nolte at their picks as ideal, at least physically.)
The quote from the beginning of this review (and of the novel) shows above mentioned dark side of the book. In that way are good guys reasoning, Grandison and Bush, two men from "Department", secret police that does not officially exist, and is mocked and hated by ordinary police. Also the bad guy Edward Shoebridge, "the Trader" has similar stoic philosophy with reconciliation with his own death: he despises modern world, the pollution, lack of character and omnipresent corruption, so he with his second wife begins a holy war against such fallen world by kidnapping important people so as to get ransoms in diamonds. Goal is - to get enough so as to purchase a piece of land, put a high fence around it and make a Camelot for them and his son from previous marriage. Both father and son are ascetic, taciturn, avid practitioners of falconry and for couple of chapters the reader is misled that one falcon feather might lead to the discovery of Shoebridge's fortress.
But until the half of the novel we do not know whether Shoebridges exists, that is we do not know that Edward Showbridge is the Trader.
The omniscient narrator is telling two combined story lines - about the agony of "the Department's good guya" - Grandison, Bush and Sangwill - and about the couple: Blanche Tyler, the psychic, and her boyfriend George Lumley, a bloke whose specialty is not to achieve success in each business he starts. Blanche seems she found golden min in a gullible old woman, Mrs Rainbird, who suffer from bad dreams in which her late sister accuses her of something. It turns out that old woman might have a nephew to which she wishes to leave a considerable legacy.
There are some funny part in description of not always smooth relationship between Blanche and George.
These two story lines are given as in parallel editing. We read about the Trader's kidnappings and about George's private investigating, since it's what he does - that way he helps his girlfriend Blanche to "see" things.
"The Department" consists of the men of integrity. Chef Grandison, ambitious Bush (around 37, same age as Edward Shoebridge and George Lumley as we learn later) and computer guy Sangwill.
In retrospect it's amazing how Canning was prophetic in his thoughts on pollution of the Earth (although through bad guy's mouth) and use of computers.
Not before the half of the novel reader learns that Edward Shoebridge is the Trader.
The reader was hereby told who is culprit, and the rest is the continuation of the description of intelligence procedure with obvious sympathy and rooting for Bush.
The movie's easiness reduces the novel on the twist: Shoebridge couple is kidnapping important people to earn the money for their Camelot whilst they simply can receive the legacy from old Mrs. Rainbird.
In the novel it turnes out that Edward Shoebridge knew all the time that he was nephew of old Mrs. Rainbird but he had loathed her and the family ever since he had found out that he was given for adoption since he was born out of wedlock.
Blanche Tyler is murdered in the nove and it was staged as suicide. And after that I thought that George Lumley will, too, be killed when he recklessly came to the crime scene so to speak, when he rang the bell of Shoebridge's lair to ask for the Blanche whose death was pronounced suicide (Shoebridges made it look that way with a hose and a muffler etc; and when police found out that Blanche had suicide history in the family it was easy to settle with the verdict "suicide".) When George was sitting in Shoebridge's house and drinking "already second cup of tea", I expected to read "now their faces got blurred in front of his eyes...", but they let him go and so "the Deparment" easily discovered them. More logical was for Shoebridges to eliminate also George. Even if this time the should have to hide the body instead of staging another suicide in such a short period. It would have created a little bit technical problems for writer - how will the Department find the lead to Shoenridge's house, but there was another talking head, Mr. Angers, who would certainly appear and tell that he had given Shoebridge's address ti Blanche. It would jave taken no more than two extra chapters to achieve that.
In the movie both George and Blanche survived in happy ending.
The novel is indeed dark with denial of happy ending. The novel says "no, the battle between the evil and the good isn't finished in spite of that good guys caught the culprits (and even executed them with no trial!) since the son, adopted anyway by naive Mrs. Rainbird, was just a "sleeper". He had known of kidnappings all the time, he kills old Mrs. Rainbird (he disgusted her "he felt smell of sherry through her nostrils"...) and vows vengeance on the rest who caused his father's death - on George, Bush, Grandison...
The book is both cynical and insightful, more like Simenon and de Maupassant in the description of "small men" and merciless like le Carre in description of power of secret police and the mechanism of pure intelligence procedure (which is 90% a desk work) . Hitchcock had put emphasis on fun and the twist that hard boiled criminal could gotten easy money. He almost completely left out the work of "the Department". In addition he transferred the plot from rainy, gloomy and windy English countryside to sunny and glamorous California.
That parody of car chase and extra character played by Ed Lauter in the movie were written by Ernest Lehman, upon Hitchcock's insistence.
The novel is a bitter fun, sometimes disturbing, but thoroughly entertaining.
July 4, 2018
Part of the Birdcage series in which hard people do bad things so we can sleep easily in our beds: supposedly the ultimate Canning; peak Canning if you will. For some reason I couldn’t quite get excited with this one. It didn’t really hold my attention in the way that, say, Firecrest or The Scorpio Letters managed to do. Rainbird turns out to be the surname of a rich septuagenarian whose guilty conscience regarding past family events persuades her to engage the services of a fraudulent medium in the hope of tracing a lost descendant. This course of action eventually interferes with the rascal’s best laid plans of committing the ultimate kidnapping. The publicly denied Department, based in Birdcage walk, despair as to how to prevent the kidnapping, having no idea who the perpetrator is, but are put on the right track by the medium’s own investigator.
The way in which the twin plots collide is clever and entertaining. The main characters are unsympathetic and certainly drink far too much. The ending is unsettling and I wonder if there was a sequel?
The way in which the twin plots collide is clever and entertaining. The main characters are unsympathetic and certainly drink far too much. The ending is unsettling and I wonder if there was a sequel?
April 19, 2012
Returning to Victor Canning after half a lifetime, I really enjoyed this book. A delightful thriller set in the south of England, built of multiple threads full of interesting characters, and plotted with the precision of a master. The story is told in omniscient point of view, a technique out of favour nowadays and difficult to do convincingly. Mr Canning carries it off effortlessly.
June 5, 2018
One of my favorite Canning novels, full of fun, twists, and excitement (and by the way, a wonderful Hitchcock movie, starring Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris, much funnier than other Hitchcock films while still providing mystery and mayhem. "The Trouble with Harry (starring a very young Shirley McClain) is the only other Hitchcock I know of that shares these attributes.
October 18, 2024
Two stories come together, one about the police trying to catch two people who are expertly kidnapping prominent people and making off with ransom diamonds, and a second centering on a charismatic head in the clouds psychic and her down to earth partner searching for someone who disappeared years ago. This is the novel that Hitchcock adapted to make the film ‘Family Plot’, but the novel is a completely different creature. Hitchcock almost did away with the police part completely, changed the plot considerably, and while keeping the names of the characters in the novel, the film rewrote their characteristics. It seemed like a case of buy the rights and change whatever you want. While I found the movie to be one of the least interesting of Hitchcock’s, I really enjoyed the novel, which, despite it having flaws, had me smiling all the way through. Glad I read it, and will try another by the same author in the future.
June 24, 2025
A movie, The Family Plot, is based on this book… and I like to read books that inspired movies I have enjoyed . Both the movie and the book have their light and dark sections… although as is normal for movies taken from books… much of the side characters are reduced… still, I’m glad I read it and hope I can find more from this writer. I do have to admit I skimmed many sections slowing for the parts that interested me as I kinda knew where the story was going…
January 27, 2025
3.5/5
O ritmo poderia ser melhor, principalmente na primeira metade, mas tem todos os elementos de uma boa história: enredo, personagens, temas, escrita, senso de humor, reviravoltas. Me agrada particularmente o papel central que o acaso desempenha. Vou lembrar o final por muito tempo.
O ritmo poderia ser melhor, principalmente na primeira metade, mas tem todos os elementos de uma boa história: enredo, personagens, temas, escrita, senso de humor, reviravoltas. Me agrada particularmente o papel central que o acaso desempenha. Vou lembrar o final por muito tempo.
November 24, 2024
3,5 stars rounded up to 4.
This thriller was quite dark and the plot was certainly interesting. Some characters were complex and interesting but I failed to feel any emotion for many of them.
This thriller was quite dark and the plot was certainly interesting. Some characters were complex and interesting but I failed to feel any emotion for many of them.
September 27, 2025
Jesus, that ending was cruel but I can't say I'm surprised ...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 8, 2025
Not as fun as the movie but still a solid, quick little read. Much less focus on the villains.
June 27, 2011
I have the dubious honor of being first to review this book with anything more than a rating, so I'll be frank. First, a summary, as the jacket blurb (on my edition, at least) wasn't particularly illuminating. As the book opens, two kidnappings have occurred. The victims are low-profiled, the cases well-publicized, the ransom demands paid in diamonds, the victims returned- and the perpetrator escapes easily. He (she?) is yet to make a mistake, and Bush is worried that the criminal will go off scot-free if he doesn't slip up soon. Bush is an investigator for a covert investigative branch of the British government, a branch that technically speaking doesn't exist. He predicts that this is just a warm-up for a third kidnapping, with a high-profile victim and an enormous ransom demand. Then, if the kidnapper is smart, he'll take his money and retire. He wants (for obvious reasons) to keep this from happening.
Elsewhere, self-proclaimed medium Madame Blanche and partner George Lumley are trying to track down a Mrs. Grace Rainbird's long-lost nephew. Predictably, there are skeletons in the closet of Rainbird's past, and perhaps she shouldn't be so eager to find this nephew...
The plot somehow contrives to be simultaneously predictable and confusing. The characters are poorly formed, unlikely, and unlikable. A number of plot elements (to name them would be to spoil the plot) simply make no logical sense, or go unexplained. And the ending is a sort of chilling coda that by rights should be a hook for the sequel, but as there is no sequel feels more like a sort of cheap ploy. It's like the author Canning wants to pass himself off as more sophisticated as the average thriller writer, and so threw in the sort of "Lady and the Tiger" ending that some judge the very pinnacle of sophistication. Taken in the wider context of the book's poor quality, though, the ending is no more than one more arbitrarily-employed plot device.
Two words: time waster.
Elsewhere, self-proclaimed medium Madame Blanche and partner George Lumley are trying to track down a Mrs. Grace Rainbird's long-lost nephew. Predictably, there are skeletons in the closet of Rainbird's past, and perhaps she shouldn't be so eager to find this nephew...
The plot somehow contrives to be simultaneously predictable and confusing. The characters are poorly formed, unlikely, and unlikable. A number of plot elements (to name them would be to spoil the plot) simply make no logical sense, or go unexplained. And the ending is a sort of chilling coda that by rights should be a hook for the sequel, but as there is no sequel feels more like a sort of cheap ploy. It's like the author Canning wants to pass himself off as more sophisticated as the average thriller writer, and so threw in the sort of "Lady and the Tiger" ending that some judge the very pinnacle of sophistication. Taken in the wider context of the book's poor quality, though, the ending is no more than one more arbitrarily-employed plot device.
Two words: time waster.
March 6, 2012
This is one of the greatest suspense novels of all time, beautifully plotted, full of interesting and well-observed characters. It concerns two quests, the police trying to track down a kidnapper, and an old lady using a spirit medium to track down her illegitimate nephew sent for adoption thirty-odd years before. It is soon clear that the two quests will overlap, but the way they do and the explosive consequences are quite unpredictable. In many ways the best part is the interaction of the three participants in the second quest, Grace Rainbird, the elderly rather sceptical spinster using a medium as a last resort when other means of salving her conscience have failed, George Lumley, the medium's reluctant assistant and investigator, and Blanche Tyler, "Madame Blanche", who plays Miss Rainbird like a fisherman playing a salmon, demonstrating the combination of fakery and self-deception that constitute her tradecraft. The plot strands are intricately interwoven with no loose ends, though the ending is partially unresolved, leaving room for a sequel that Canning never wrote.
Hitchcock filmed this as 'Family Plot', but he turned it into a comedy-thriller. Canning's book is far better.
Hitchcock filmed this as 'Family Plot', but he turned it into a comedy-thriller. Canning's book is far better.
November 15, 2018
Read this because Hitchcock's last movie, FAMILY PLOT, was based on it. Well-written and compelling, it is a far more cynical work than the movie, even shockingly so. Because of this, and because I found it difficult to completely sympathize with any of the characters (which I imagine was the author's intent), I couldn't bring myself to give it any more than three stars.
September 5, 2012
good read. murder,vengeance..
May 30, 2014
A seamless, crackerjack plot. Hitchcock's last movie, Family Plot, was based, very loosely, on this. It might be the only case in Hitchcock's grand career where the book is better than the movie.
Want to read
June 7, 2019Synopsis: is there a connection between two people kidnapping prominent officials, and an elderly woman setting up a family reunion?
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