In Praise of Eric Ambler

Late last year, when I came across the news that Eric Ambler's centenary was coming up in 2009, I realized how little of the man's work I'd actually read. And so in short order I went on a mission to correct that, burning through his first six novels published during the period of 1936 and 1940, all of which were reissued by Vintage some years ago in the US and are being brought back into print by Penguin in the UK in time for the 100th anniversary of his birth.

To my delight and amazement, those early Ambler novels held up rather well, none more than A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS (1939). My appreciation for the book, and Ambler, appears this weekend in the Wall Street Journal. Here's how it opens:

Eric Ambler, born 100 years ago next month, mastered as a young man a genre still in its infancy. Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” (1907) and John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps” (1915) preceded his works, and compatriots Graham Greene and W. Somerset Maugham fashioned artful thrillers out of turbulent political times alongside him. But Ambler’s mix of swift pacing, believable protagonists and thrilling locales proved an untold influence on those who took up the spy-story pen in his wake. After all, when James Bond, in the film version of “From Russia With Love,” needed a book to read on a critical train trip, he chose an Eric Ambler novel—specifically, “A Coffin For Dimitrios,” which 70 years after its 1939 publication holds up as a startling, elegant masterpiece of espionage fiction.

Ambler’s oeuvre, especially the six novels he wrote between 1936 and 1940, grew out of his background, pursuits and outlook: early exposure to the music-hall world through his parents’ touring puppet show, a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a copywriting stint at a London advertising agency, time spent writing avant-garde plays in Paris, and staunch anti-Fascist views. Add to these a strong disdain for the all-too-familiar tropes of the spy stories popular during his English boyhood—described by Ambler in a 1951 essay as “the black-velveted seductress, the British secret-service numbskull hero, the omnipotent spymaster”—and the stage was set for a more realistic approach that has itself become commonplace: taking an ordinary man and dropping him in the middle of extraordinary events that will put him in danger, test his mettle and reveal his inner survivor.

Read on for the rest, and the specifics of why I think COFFIN is so damn brilliant. There are many pieces I am proud of, and many publications I'm honored to be a part of, even for a short while, but I have to admit I'm really quite excited to be in the WSJ.

Comments

[Bill Crider]

Glad you got the WSJ gig. I read all the Ambler novels available back in the '60s. I kept up and read the ones that appeared after that, too. The only one I've reread is COFFIN. One of the greats, I think.

[R. T. Davis]

Great Article!
I hope you do not mind, but I've linked to your WSJ article over at my blog, BOOKED FOR MURDER.
I also am a huge Eric Ambler fan.
Again, terrific job on the article.

[Keith Raffel]

Bravo, Sarah! Just read Coffin last year and, yes, it did hold up. At the same time it did a great job conveying the louche atmosphere of interwar Europe.

[Cara]

Congtats Sarah! Love A Coffin for Demetrios - a classic and you nailed it. Alan Furst cites Ambler as his major influence.

[Robert Marion]

Nice article.

I am a San Francisco noir film host and there is a lot of demand for me to show films based on Ambler novels. I have shown "Journey Into Fear" and have been asked to put on an Ambler series -- which I will be doing.

I have recently started a blog on noir film and news wherein I mention your article and link to your site (http://noircinema.blogspot.com/).

Cheers,
Robert

[Sam]

Great op-ed. Thanks for writing it. Much of Ambler's stuff holds up extremely well. He really has a tremendous gift for making the chase believable. It's nice to see him get some wonderful press.