Victor Canning: Birdcage (USA 1980)

From the Publisher:
From attempted suicide to well-plotted murders…
BIRDCAGE

...from Portugal's beaches to the streets of London, from the secrets of a woman's diary to the highest seats of government... an ongoing threat and an ever-tightening noose... and at the center of it all a mysterious British intelligence unit known as
BIRDCAGE

Victor Canning: Birdcage. Charter Books, ISBN: 0441062342 (July, 1980), 276 p., $2.50.

Victor Canning: Birdcage (USA 1979)

From the Publisher:
"Victor Canning is still producing stories as fresh and exciting as the first snowdrop. What a master of obliquity he is! He slides crabwise into Birdcage as if his story is to be little more than an in-depth study of the growing and changing relationship between a young nun who has fled her convent and tried to drown herself, and the kind, lazy, undemanding man who has plucked her from the sea. It would have been enough, in itself, to make a fine novel. But Mr. Canning has another, quite different story to tell, of intrigue and blackmail and violence in the steely world of 'security' whose grubby tentacles are reaching out with inhuman logie to touch and defile those two new-made lives. Utterly absorbing." -- The Sunday Times (London)

BIRDCAGE
A novel by Victor Canning Author of The Mask of Memory, The Kingsford Mark etc.

An internationally noted master of intrigue is at his best in this new novel, its theme the malignant influence of professional Intelligence upon private lives. Beginning with the attempted suicide of Sister Luiza, born Sarah Branton, and her rescue by the man destined to become her lover, the narrative is first set in Portugal, then moves to the Cotswolds of England and back again and, finally, into the very center of the Intelligence web. A poignant love story as well as a thriller, it builds to a climax as beautifully prepared for as it is devastating.

Victor Canning: Birdcage. William Morrow, ISBN: 0688034535 (January, 1979), 233 p., $8.95.

Victor Canning: Birdcage (UK 1978)

From the Publisher:
An emotional young nun, convinced that she has betrayed her vows, runs away from her Portuguese convent and wades into the sea to expiate her disgrace by drowning. Unconscious, and at the ultimate moment, she is rescued by an easygoing, unambitious Englishman, Richard Farley. The next day, in a comfortable villa, the late Sister Luiza wakes to a new existence as Sarah Branton.

Sarah, an English girl dowered with an antique jewelled girdle of great value through her long-dead and highly unorthodox mother, Lady Jean Branton, finds the idyllic life now opening before her and her lover, Richard Farley, remorselessly threatened by the pitiless servants of State Security in London.

Set in Portugal, Gloucestershire and London, Birdcage is a poignant story of love and suspense that magnificently demonstrates Victor Canning's unrivalled position as a master story-teller.

Victor Canning: Birdcage. Heinemann, ISBN: 043410793X (October, 1978), 233 p., £4.95.