Notes: Canning wrote many well-received thrillers. This book, which ends tragically, is structurally much like his other highly literate novels but has a key (and unexpected) science-fiction element in it: the existence on Earth of a small colony of alien beings nearly identical to human beings. How they came to be there, and what their origin is, however, is never clearly explained "Originally published at £2.10" on back flap of 1974 Book Club Associates edition seen in ebay.com photo.