Mr Finchley Takes the Road

Name: Mr Finchley Takes the Road
Rating: 4.53 (1132 reviews)

by Victor Canning Book 3 in the Classic Canning series.

First published 1940

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4.5(1,132)

Now married, Edgar Finchley buys a brightly painted horse-drawn caravan and sets out alone through Kent while looking for a house. Learning to manage the horse, the vehicle and life on the road exposes him to village tradespeople, landowners, itinerant workers and a sequence of unsuitable properties. What begins as an eccentric house-hunting expedition becomes more dangerous when the caravan proves to contain a secret left by its former owner.

Although published in 1940, the novel belongs to the late-interwar world of the earlier Finchley books. Its lanes, commons, roadside camps and small communities preserve a Britain in which horse transport still existed alongside motor traffic. The story completes Finchley’s movement from timid clerk to a man capable of meeting uncertainty with patience, curiosity and practical courage.