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The Finger of Saturn
US 1st edition 1st printing, great dw (dust jacket) & book In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
- GenresScience Fiction
270 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Victor Canning
165 books60 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 11, 2017
British novelists are a breed apart and, without stretching the truth, represent a genre unto themselves. Victor Canning is one such novelist who represents the quintessential example of that breed. His book "The Finger of Saturn" is a masterpiece of that genre.
Other practitioners of this trade are Winston Churchill, Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, the Waugh brothers. All of these modern twentieth century authors owe a debt of gratitude, perhaps, to Thomas Hardy who is said to be the father of the modern British novel.
As so many are, the local public library is busy ridding their shelves of old hardcover books that have been on their shelves for many years in order to make room for some of the torrent of newer published works that spew forth from the hardcopy presses each year. They take these venerable old soldiers, some of them without dust jackets, and put them on a table near the entrance hallway, which is called the "giveaway table". A small sign on the wall advertises that these books are free for the taking, if you are interested. I must say I have availed myself of this generous policy repeatedly through the years because I love old books and cannot see them being wasted. It was through this mechanism that I acquired a drab, slightly soiled copy of Canning's book "The Finger of Saturn".
At first I thought it was a science fiction book. I had never heard of Victor Canning. And it looked like a work of 1970's science fiction. The packaging was similar and there was that reference to a planet, which many science fiction works have in their titles. I brought it home and there it sat on my bedside table along with 25 or so other books that maybe someday I would read when I got around to it.
Two nights ago I had the chance to start reading it. A winter storm had come and snowed me in, and there was a little free time to devote to new reading. I was not disappointed. Some books bore me to tears and I throw them across the room or drop them on the floor after the first five or ten pages because they are so formulaic, or poorly written. But this was not one of them. As a novel, it was an entirely original work. In fact it was so original that I do not feel I can give any review of its plot or characters without spoiling it for the reader. So I will just say that it is a very good book, full of a wise, wonderful understanding of the King's English, and you will have fun reading it; and at the end, when you are done, you will be glad you did.
Other practitioners of this trade are Winston Churchill, Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, the Waugh brothers. All of these modern twentieth century authors owe a debt of gratitude, perhaps, to Thomas Hardy who is said to be the father of the modern British novel.
As so many are, the local public library is busy ridding their shelves of old hardcover books that have been on their shelves for many years in order to make room for some of the torrent of newer published works that spew forth from the hardcopy presses each year. They take these venerable old soldiers, some of them without dust jackets, and put them on a table near the entrance hallway, which is called the "giveaway table". A small sign on the wall advertises that these books are free for the taking, if you are interested. I must say I have availed myself of this generous policy repeatedly through the years because I love old books and cannot see them being wasted. It was through this mechanism that I acquired a drab, slightly soiled copy of Canning's book "The Finger of Saturn".
At first I thought it was a science fiction book. I had never heard of Victor Canning. And it looked like a work of 1970's science fiction. The packaging was similar and there was that reference to a planet, which many science fiction works have in their titles. I brought it home and there it sat on my bedside table along with 25 or so other books that maybe someday I would read when I got around to it.
Two nights ago I had the chance to start reading it. A winter storm had come and snowed me in, and there was a little free time to devote to new reading. I was not disappointed. Some books bore me to tears and I throw them across the room or drop them on the floor after the first five or ten pages because they are so formulaic, or poorly written. But this was not one of them. As a novel, it was an entirely original work. In fact it was so original that I do not feel I can give any review of its plot or characters without spoiling it for the reader. So I will just say that it is a very good book, full of a wise, wonderful understanding of the King's English, and you will have fun reading it; and at the end, when you are done, you will be glad you did.
July 18, 2022
An early 1970’s Canning and not one of my favourites. I suppose I expect the main character to be sympathetic and resourceful but first person narrator Robert Rolt is a pratt. He and his extended family own a lot of land in the West Country and Rolt runs the estate they have owned since mediaeval times. He’s impetuous, quick to anger and incapable of listening.
So when Vickers, a government man, arrives one day with film confirming that Rolt’s wife (who disappeared two years ago) is alive and well and living under an assumed name Rolt gets cross and remains cross with everyone for the rest of the book. Can someone suffer from such a specific amnesia that they retain all their speech and language facility but forget that they can ride a horse, fish and play golf (but can drive a car fine) - or have a mother living in Italy etc etc? It stretches belief and the plot holes are huge.
The nasty secret service are prepared to give Rolt sufficient information to disrupt those responsible for his wife’s travails but his mistrust of them extends to his becoming sympathetic to those who might otherwise wish him harm.
The denouement is even more far fetched and in the end it was I who became irritated and cross.
So when Vickers, a government man, arrives one day with film confirming that Rolt’s wife (who disappeared two years ago) is alive and well and living under an assumed name Rolt gets cross and remains cross with everyone for the rest of the book. Can someone suffer from such a specific amnesia that they retain all their speech and language facility but forget that they can ride a horse, fish and play golf (but can drive a car fine) - or have a mother living in Italy etc etc? It stretches belief and the plot holes are huge.
The nasty secret service are prepared to give Rolt sufficient information to disrupt those responsible for his wife’s travails but his mistrust of them extends to his becoming sympathetic to those who might otherwise wish him harm.
The denouement is even more far fetched and in the end it was I who became irritated and cross.
January 12, 2024
Detectives de los 50tas
Atrapante historia ambientada en la guerra fría de los años 50. Una absorbente atmosfera llena de corrupción y poder político matizada con hechos inexplicables. Una especie de "novela negra" atravesada por la ciencia ficción blanda.
Es un libro interesante de lectura liviana.
Atrapante historia ambientada en la guerra fría de los años 50. Una absorbente atmosfera llena de corrupción y poder político matizada con hechos inexplicables. Una especie de "novela negra" atravesada por la ciencia ficción blanda.
Es un libro interesante de lectura liviana.
April 2, 2013
Your wife goes out for a drive and never comes back; her car is found abandoned in a lay-by and there's no trace of her for the next three years, until an agent from a shadowy government department turns up one day to tell you that she's alive and well and living a new life as a different person. So begins The Finger of Saturn by the now out-of-favour British thriller writer Victor Canning (1911-86).
Robert Rolt eventually finds his wife, Sarah, but when she comes back she's different. Is she who she says she is? Where had she been? What has she been doing for three years, and why doesn't she recognise her husband? Then there's the enigmatic Albert Chinn and Sarah's over-bearing mother, who seems to know an awful lot more about her disappearance than she's prepared to let on.
This is an exciting read, and Canning delivers a fairly intricate plot which is original and something different from the norm. Robert narrates the story at a fairly rapid pace, and it's impossible not to get caught up in the mystery of Sarah's absence and the way in which a 'little local difficulty' for a Dorset country gent has far-reaching consequences.
The writing is a little stilted at times, and there's one or two clunky clichés when it comes to characterisation, but on the whole I enjoyed this escapist story. Will certainly reacquaint myself with Canning's work, and am especially going to look out for a copy of the Rainbird Pattern, which was adapted for Hitchcock and turned out to be his final film (re-titled Family Plot). The Melting Man sounds intriguing as well...
© Koplowitz 2013
Robert Rolt eventually finds his wife, Sarah, but when she comes back she's different. Is she who she says she is? Where had she been? What has she been doing for three years, and why doesn't she recognise her husband? Then there's the enigmatic Albert Chinn and Sarah's over-bearing mother, who seems to know an awful lot more about her disappearance than she's prepared to let on.
This is an exciting read, and Canning delivers a fairly intricate plot which is original and something different from the norm. Robert narrates the story at a fairly rapid pace, and it's impossible not to get caught up in the mystery of Sarah's absence and the way in which a 'little local difficulty' for a Dorset country gent has far-reaching consequences.
The writing is a little stilted at times, and there's one or two clunky clichés when it comes to characterisation, but on the whole I enjoyed this escapist story. Will certainly reacquaint myself with Canning's work, and am especially going to look out for a copy of the Rainbird Pattern, which was adapted for Hitchcock and turned out to be his final film (re-titled Family Plot). The Melting Man sounds intriguing as well...
© Koplowitz 2013
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews