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Rex Carver #3
The python project
First edition bound in blue cloth. A VG+ copy in a Good dust jacket. Small rubs to the book's corners. Soiling to the edges of the upper page block. The dust jacket has a 2" x 1" chip at the bottom left edge of the front panel. Rubs to its spine tips and corners. There is a small chip at the rear panel's lower edge.
284 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
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54 people want to read
About the author
Victor Canning
160 books57 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 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 6, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in January 2001.
The Python Project is very similar to The Whip Hand, an earlier Canning thriller; it has the same background, many of the same characters, and virtually the same plot. Rex Carver, shady private detective, is hired to investigate the theft of some jewellery by an insurance company, and swiftly finds himself involved in something very dangerous and obscure, but an affair at least agreeably full of good looking young women.
The main interest in this novel is when Carver's partner, the organised Hilda Wilkins, who disapproves of Carver's operational methods, becomes involved in the active side of the case, much to her dislike. However, the novel as a whole is far too similar to The Whip Hand to be truly successful; you can't help feeling that a private detective whose account of every case he has involves reiterating the phrase "If I'd known what I was getting into, I'd have left it alone" is not quite in the right line of work. (This is one of the more annoying, if small, similarities.) Either novel by itself would rank among Canning's best, but taken together, one of them must seem very unoriginal.
The Python Project is very similar to The Whip Hand, an earlier Canning thriller; it has the same background, many of the same characters, and virtually the same plot. Rex Carver, shady private detective, is hired to investigate the theft of some jewellery by an insurance company, and swiftly finds himself involved in something very dangerous and obscure, but an affair at least agreeably full of good looking young women.
The main interest in this novel is when Carver's partner, the organised Hilda Wilkins, who disapproves of Carver's operational methods, becomes involved in the active side of the case, much to her dislike. However, the novel as a whole is far too similar to The Whip Hand to be truly successful; you can't help feeling that a private detective whose account of every case he has involves reiterating the phrase "If I'd known what I was getting into, I'd have left it alone" is not quite in the right line of work. (This is one of the more annoying, if small, similarities.) Either novel by itself would rank among Canning's best, but taken together, one of them must seem very unoriginal.
April 25, 2022
I accidentally got my hands on this book and I don’t regret it.
First of all, the plot is amazing. It resembles a lot of James Bond adventures that I loved since I was a kid. It’s fast paced but easy to follow, has a lot of twists and turns and the characters are interesting and well developed for their role in the plot.
If you ever come across a Canning’s book, give it shot!
First of all, the plot is amazing. It resembles a lot of James Bond adventures that I loved since I was a kid. It’s fast paced but easy to follow, has a lot of twists and turns and the characters are interesting and well developed for their role in the plot.
If you ever come across a Canning’s book, give it shot!
October 9, 2015
A terrific and absorbing adventure with abundant twists and turns...
September 1, 2023
It has taken ages for me to read this book because I found it uninteresting, definitely not thrilling. My heart was not in it. When it was first published in 1967, foreign travel, particularly flying, was not popular, maybe not that affordable. Reading it in 2023, I found that much of the flying in the novel is totally unnecessary, does not add any local colour or anything. Altogether I thought the novel rather formulaic; previous books and films in particular have accustomed me to this complicated telling of a story where danger lurks around the corner and there are constant quandaries, then good luck. Maybe I simply expected too much after the same author's "Firecrest" (published a few years later) that I enjoyed very much.
On the positive note I think the title is excellent and the python bracelet and the python itself were definitely photogenic, worth imagining.
On the positive note I think the title is excellent and the python bracelet and the python itself were definitely photogenic, worth imagining.
May 19, 2023
Good entertaining spy thriller of the non-plausible kind. Very good page turner, witty prose and lots of twists and turns. Likable villains and Sadist good guys, Jewelled and real pythons and a lot of hot girls too! The plot was convoluted but well- constructed except for some inexplicable visits to lady friends by Rex Carver when he was supposed to lie low.
Overall it was a very competently written spy thriller that should entertain those who like to read Gavin Lyall, Bagley or Durbridge .
Overall it was a very competently written spy thriller that should entertain those who like to read Gavin Lyall, Bagley or Durbridge .
April 12, 2020
Old school Jack Reacher mixed with Bond
January 27, 2014
Quite an exciting book, starts off as a case of possible insurance fraud, spirals into a high-stakes cold war drama. Very much a relic of an earlier time, tautly narrated and plotted, full of exotic locales, thrilling action, beautiful women and colourful characters. Canning has picked up some of the mannerisms of hardboiled/noir writers but this pure escapism.
January 23, 2016
This book was very charming and a fun quick read. The story progresses very quickly and had me hooked from beginning to end.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews