The Solid Gold Buddha

In 1981 after I had turned fourteen, the librarian at Whiteinch Library, where I often went at lunchtime, informed me that I was now entitled to an adult library ticket. Now as an “adult” reader I could venture into sections that we had previously been chased out of, armed with a new pink library card that replaced the green junior one. It was now time for me to read an adult book. But after the initial thrill of promotion to literary adulthood had worn off, I was disappointed to find that so many of the books on the shelves were very long and full of small print. It was difficult to get past the first two pages of most of the volumes I picked up. So I was delighted when I came across The Solid Gold Buddha by W. H. Canaway, simply because it was so short. At 215 pages, it was just a little bit longer than a Hardy Boys story. I checked it out and took it home.

The story was not really all that difficult to follow. Happily married Bernard Miller loses his wife in a plane crash. Then tragedy strikes again when his young son gets rabies from a slavering dog in Israel. Only one hospital in the world can treat the boy, privately and at considerable expense. Miller has his wife’s insurance money, but that will only cover part of the cost. So he concocts a daring plan to cut an enormous chunk of gold out of a solid gold Buddha in Thailand, enlisting the help of a travelling theatre company and a couple of other competent but somewhat shady characters. I enjoyed it a great deal.

This book is special to me because it was the first adult book that I read all the way through. It is by no means a classic. It’s a pretty straightforward story about a daring crime, but set in an exotic location and with a surprising little (dare I say it) twist at the end. It is also the first book I read that contained some very light sex scenes, which made 14-year-old me feel more mature! I decided that I would seek out more W. H. Canaway books, although in the end I read only one: Harry Doing Good.

William Hamilton Canaway (1925-1988) was an English author who published seventeen novels between 1958 and 1987. The Solid Gold Buddha, published in 1979, was his second-last book. When he passed away in 1988, I had come to live in Brazil and had almost forgotten those teenage reading sessions at the library. It was much later that I remembered the two stories I had read all those years ago. When I visited Scotland last year, a friend of mine who was organizing a book sale in the village of Crail up on the east coast told me that she had a box of Canaway books and dug out copies of both stories for me. They still make quite good reading today.