Rex Carver

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Rex Carver is a fictional British private eye created by the prolific writer Victor Canning. [1] He appeared in four fast-paced, irreverently narrated novels in the 1960s. [2]

In the book preceding the novels, The Limbo Line (1963), the Government agency that Carver is unwillingly drawn into is described for the first time. [3] It introduces Richard Manston, a retired agent drawn back into the world of spies, who also appears as a character in some of the later Rex Carver books.

Although strictly a private investigator, Carver knows a number of people who work for a shadowy British undercover agency and he frequently runs into both enemy agents and hostile British agents during his adventures. It is by no means a stretch to call his adventures spy thrillers or to consider Carver himself a secret agent of sorts. [4]

Rex Carver novels

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Doubled in Diamonds is a 1966 spy thriller novel by the British Victor Canning. It is the second in a series of four novels about Rex Carver, a private detective drawn back into his old profession of espionage.

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The Melting Man is a 1968 thriller novel by the British Victor Canning. It is the fourth and final entry in a series novels about Rex Carver, a private detective drawn back into his old profession of espionage. It features the French secret agent Aristide de la Dole, who had previously appeared in Doubled in Diamonds.

References

  1. Higgins, John. Victor Canning biography
  2. Fantastic Fiction
  3. Higgins, John. A Rex Carver Companion (2009)
  4. Ripley, Mike. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: the boom in British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed (2017)
  5. The Whip Hand , Google Books
  6. Doubled in Diamonds , Google Books
  7. The Python Project , Google Books
  8. The Melting Man , Google Books