The Painted Tent

Victor Canning

Apr 2013 · Pan Macmillan

About this ebook

Can the peregrine falcon, Fria, who has escaped from captivity, learn to fend for herself in the wild? And can Smiler, desperately anxious that Fria should be all right, solve for himself the problem that has kept him in hiding from the police for so long?

The final book in Victor Canning's classic children's trilogy, which began in The Runaways and continued in Flight of the Grey Goose.

About the author

Victor Canning was primarily a writer of thrillers, and wrote his many books under the pseudonyms Julian Forest and Alan Gould. Among his immediate contemporaries were Eric Ambler, Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes.

Canning was a prolific writer throughout his career, which began young: he had sold several short stories by the age of nineteen and his first novel, Mr Finchley Discovers His England (1934) was published when he was twenty-three. Canning also wrote for children: his Smiler trilogy was adapted for US children's television.

Canning's later thrillers were darker and more complex than his earlier work and received great critical acclaim. The Rainbird Pattern was awarded the CWA Silver Dagger in 1973 and nominated for an Edgar award in 1974.

In 1976 The Rainbird Pattern was transformed by Alfred Hitchcock into the comic film Family Plot, which was to be Hitchcock's last film. Several of Canning's other novels including Golden Salamander (1949) were also made into films during Canning's lifetime.