Rex Carver Mysteries

The Rex Carver Mysteries comprise four first-person thrillers published between 1965 and 1968. Rex Carver is a London private investigator whose apparently routine commissions repeatedly draw him into the work of intelligence officers, international criminals and politically connected clients. His secretary Hilda Wilkins provides practical support while Carver follows cases through Britain and continental Europe.

The series belongs to the culture of Cold War espionage fiction but combines spy operations with the methods of the private-eye novel. Missing people, stolen diamonds, secret documents and disputed identities lead through Paris, Ireland, France, the Mediterranean and Central Europe. Canning uses rapid travel and shifting loyalties to portray a 1960s world in which private crime, state intelligence and post-war political tensions are difficult to separate.