by Eric Ambler
While this is considered a classic of the spy genre and I have enjoyed the author's work before (especially Epitaph for a Spy) I had a hard time finishing this book. The writing style, which was pretty much flashbacks and info dumping, just did not engage me. I did think the overall plot was interes...
”A man’s features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for their fulfilment and which his fears demand for their prot...
Ambler has an elegant, quote-worthy prose style and a gift for characterization, not just in inventing distinct, memorable characters, but a real ear for the telling detail in expression or feature that brings a place or person vividly to mind. Speaking of which, this was one of my favorite bits: A...
A Frenchman named Chamfort, who should have known better, once said that chance was a nickname for Providence.Well ... what can I say apart from that this didn't gel for me. -----------------------------17/5/2013 - Re-visit via radio: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01shstw
This is a curious book. A pioneer in the espionage novels, casting an unwitting foreign (a Brit in the two Ambler books I've read) in an espionage plot he only slowly realizes he's entangled in, Ambler created a template that's been used over and over again and remains surprisingly contemporary. Yet...
My least favourite of his so far - but he writes so evocatively of a vanished time and place he's hard to put down
This was a fun read. According to the jacket this was the first novel in which an everyman is caught in a web of international intrigue. It is very reminiscent of the 39 Steps. One could see Sydney Greenstreet, for example, in the role of Mister Peters. The protagonist, Mister Latimer, is an economi...
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