The Melting Man - Victor Canning

Victor Canning is one of those authors whose name I’ve seen around for decades but have never read until now. THE MELTING MAN, the fourth and final book in Canning’s series about British private detective Rex Carver, was published in hardcover in England in 1968, in hardcover from William Morrow in 1969, and later had paperback reprints from Curtis Books and Charter Books. It’s still available as an e-book on Amazon, and that’s the edition I read.

Narrator/protagonist Carver is a PI mostly in the classic mode, a guy who likes to drink, likes beautiful women, is quick with some snappy banter, and can be as tough as he needs to be. That’s pretty tough in this case, which finds him hired by an Irish millionaire to recover a missing car. The client’s stepdaughter disappeared for several days while driving the car, and although she turned up, she claims to have amnesia and has no idea where the car is. Carver immediately suspects there’s more to this case than a missing car, and he’s right, of course. Nothing is what it seems, a number of dangerous individuals also want to find the car, and the whole thing is wrapped in an international conspiracy with the fate of nations at stake.

THE MELTING MAN is well-plotted and very well-written, but it takes its own sweet time building up any momentum. The pace picks up considerably in the second half of the book, although Carver still spends a lot of time driving around Europe. (Most of the book takes place in France and Italy.) But it does build up to a very suspenseful climax and a satisfying ending. Canning can write, he’s just a little more deliberate about it than most of the authors I read.

I wound up liking this book, but it’s kind of a toss-up whether I liked it enough to read more by Victor Canning. Time will tell, I suppose.