Background to Danger is an anomoly for pulp spy novel. Ambler provides a fantastic critique of western capitalism's covert dealings on the international stage. The plotline is also unique, because he has a British national teaming up with Russian spies in pre-cold war Europe. This novel is a must for those of us interested in history and archived worldviews.

To read or not to read the great spy novels of Eric Ambler? That is the question most people ignore because they are not familiar with Mr. Ambler and his particularly talent.

Mr. Ambler has always had this problem. As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his introduction to Intrigue (an omnibus volume containing Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, Cause for Alarm and Background to Danger), "Perhaps this was the volume that brought Mr. Ambler to the attention of the public that make best-sellers. They had been singularly inattentive until its appearance -- I suppose only God knows why." He goes on to say, "They had not even heeded the critics, who had said, from the very first, that Mr. Ambler had given new life and fresh viewpoint to the art of the spy novel -- an art supposedly threadbare and certainly cliché-infested."

So what's new and different about Eric Ambler writing? His heroes are ordinary people with whom almost any reader can identify, which puts you in the middle of a turmoil of emotions. His bad guys are characteristic of those who did the type of dirty deeds described in the book. His angels on the sidelines are equally realistic to the historical context. The backgrounds, histories and plot lines are finely nuanced into the actual evolution of the areas and events described during that time. In a way, these books are like historical fiction, except they describe deceit and betrayal rather than love and affection. From a distance of over 60 years, we read these books today as a way to step back into the darkest days of the past and relive them vividly. You can almost see and feel a dark hand raised to strike you in the back as you read one of his book's later pages. In a way, these stories are like a more realistic version of what Dashiell Hammett wrote as applied to European espionage.

Since Mr. Ambler wrote, the thrillers have gotten much bigger in scope . . . and moved beyond reality. Usually, the future of the human race is at stake. The heroes make Superman look like a wimp in terms of their prowess and knowledge. There's usually a love interest who exceeds your vision of the ideal woman. Fast-paced violence and killing dominate most pages. There are lots of toys to describe and use in imaginative ways. The villains combine the worst faults of the 45 most undesirable people in world history and have gained enormous wealth and power while being totally crazy. The plot twists and turns like cruise missile every few seconds in unexpected directions. If you want a book like that, please do not read Mr. Ambler's work. You won't like it.

If you want to taste, touch, smell, see and hear evil from close range and move through fear to defeat it, Mr. Ambler's your man.

On to Background to Danger.

The book opens with a curious discussion in London before the start of World War II about securing Rumanian oil, and the unexpected complications of international politics. That's the big picture. Then, we move on to the small one. Kenton, an English journalist with a case of the financial shorts after an unsuccessful round of gambling on poker-dice, boards a train in Nuremberg to go to Linz in Austria. Sachs tells Kenton that he is a German Jew and will be sent to a concentration camp if the frontier guards find the money he carries. Sachs offers Kenton three hundred marks to carry the package of money for him. Kenton is delighted . . . except when Sachs refuses to take the package after crossing the frontier, and offers yet another three hundred marks to carry the package to a hotel in Linz. At the hotel, Kenton has a most unpleasant surprise. Then when he opens the package, his former happiness is replaced with absolute terror. What should he do now?

This book is built around the question of who is a friend and who is an enemy. Kenton finds that he has more in common with the interests of a Soviet agent (before the alliance with the Nazis occurred) than with some of his fellow citizens who are "businessmen."

This book has much more action than most Ambler novels, and will feel more like a current thriller to most readers. You will probably enjoy the story more if you understand the history of Europe just before World War II. One of the favorite dilemmas then for Western democracies was to choose whether the dangers of Nazism (the German government's philosophy) were worse than the dangers of Communism (the Soviet government's philosophy). The book has a rich international flavor that puts you right in the middle of the sort of espionage intrigue that was actually occurring at the time. It's a delicious tale in that way.

After you finish this story, think about how you should decide who you can trust . . . and who you cannot.

Eric Ambler may not have invented the novel of suspense and intrigue but he certainly perfected it. Ambler's novels are analogous to Hitchcock's movies in that they present a sustained atmosphere of suspense, tension, and even fear with little explicit violence. Like Hitchcock, Ambler was quite simply the best there was in his genre and no one currently on the scene can seriously compete with either of these two masters.

State of Siege is not one of Ambler's best book, but it is quite good nevertheless. If you're looking for a good suspense novel and you don't require that it be drenched in gore, give this one a try. I think you'll come back to Ambler again and again.

Eric Ambler is one of our greatest writers of action-based suspense thrillers. What distinguishes his stories are two elements that are often missing from today's thrillers. First, the protagonist is way over his head with little apparent chance to survive. Second, during the story's development, many moral choices need to be made.

In State of Siege, we meet Steve Fraser, an expatriate English engineer, as he finishes a highly paid three-year assignment to build a dam in an island nation near Indonesia. The local political situation is a little dicey after the revolutionary party finds itself having a hard time actually running the country. The dam project has been affected by the arrival of surplus military officer liaison. One was dependable, a Major Suparto, who plays a key role in the rest of the story.

Fraser then finishes up, and flies over rebel lines to the capital to wait for his flight back to England in three days. He borrows an apartment from a friend while he's away, arranges for a beautiful woman to accompany him for the three days, and settles down for a little rest and relaxation.

That seeming tranquility is shattered when the rebels take advantage of military maneuvers away from the capital to seize control of the radio station and key areas in the center city, just where Fraser is staying. He finds himself surrounded by rebels, who aren't sure whether to kill or ignore him. Then, his mere proximity to the rebel leaders draws him into the vortex of the conflict. Over 24 hours, he finds himself forced to make many difficult choices if he is to stay alive for another day . . . and protect the life of Rosalie Linden, who would not survive without him.

The story is a delight in character development. With all of the stress involved in a coup d'etat, we see people for who they really are . . . as the life and death challenges peel away their exterior masks. Fraser, Suparto, Rosalie, and Sanusi (the rebel leader) are especially well done and interesting.

The plot is a neat one, showing realistically the shadowy calculations required to seize and retain control of a newly independent country.

After you finish the book, think about what you would have done if you were Fraser in the same situation. Could you have made better choices than he did? If not, why not?

Donald Mitchell
Co-author of The 2,000 Percent Solution, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage

When I picked up "A Coffin for Dimitrios," I had no idea that the suspense level of a 60+ year old book would be so high. Needless to say, Ambler's book was a welcome surprise.

Charles Latimer is a British writer of detective stories who, pretty much due to boredom, finds himself hanging out in Turkey in the 1930's. While in Turkey, Latimer hears from a Turkish official the story of an elusive, shifty criminal called Dimitrios. Partly to gather material for a new novel, and partly out of personal curiosity, Latimer attempts to trace the movements of Dimitrios during the past several years. In doing so, the writer learns that the career of Dimitrios includes much criminal activity including murder, blackmail, white slavery, and much more. The more Latimer learns, the more he must know. Latimer's journey takes him to many different and dangerous locations as he learns that knowledge of Dimitrios can itself be a very deadly thing.

This is the first Eric Ambler book I have read. I hope it is not the last. Ambler has the ability to write about exotic locations and different cultures in a way that makes them come alive. The characters are believable and colorful at the same time, without becoming comic. I think I can honestly say that Ambler packs more suspense in every page than most thriller writers today can place in an entire book. The book is not a flashy story with lots of gimmicks, but a real well-thought out suspense novel that deserves to be read by anyone who enjoys a good suspense story.

Ambler's book traces the story of Charles Latimer's, a British professor who writes detective novels in his spare time, descent into the world of international espionage and greed. Ambler is wonderful at recreating the recollections of an earnest and somewhat simple man who is hopelessly out his league as his follows the life history of a corpse he's been shown for laughs in a Turkish morgue.

This is the real deal in terms of mystery/spy novels. It's a delightfully intelligent and engaging page turner by the author who invented the modern spy genre. The roiling, ethnically and politically complex Europe of the 1930 is nearly another character of the novel, but unlike the work of more contemporary authors, the reader never feels bludgeoned over the head with historical trivia.

This is a fun, interesting, page-turning thriller. Great beach reading, but intelligent enough not to insult the serious reader of literature.

Ordinarily, I don't read thrillers, but since this was one of my mother's favorite books, I thought I would give it a try. What a surprise!

Instead of some overblown macho stud like James Bond, the protagonist is Charles Latimer, a quiet English academic, who becomes intrigued by the death of an arch-felon, Dimitrios Makropoulos. He decides to find out more about this Dimitrios, and winds up traversing Europe from Istanbul to Paris.

There are no gimmicks in Ambler's writing; he presents a mystery and unravels it. Supposedly, Ambler is responsible for the "modern" spy thriller. If so, he did it well, but the genre devolved after him. A Coffin for Dimitrios is a superb book whether it is classified a mystery, thriller, or whatever.

Imagine scrimping and saving for that special vacation. Someplace you have always wanted to go. You arrive and things are splenid, that is until suddenly you are arrested for being a spy. Thats the case here, and to make matters worse, your told you can't leave the country unless you help in finding the real spy and if you refuse then it's off to jail.

Josef Vadassy is the main character in this book. A language teacher who gets arrested in France and is arrested for a crime he hasn't committed.

This was a good book with many twists and turns. You find yourself laughing at some of the situations that Vadassy finds himself in and feeling sorry for him at the same time.

Though this is an older book,it sort of reminds you of an old movie or radio program.

If you are looking for something light hearted then I highly recommend this book.

I consider this book not as one of the best of Amblers's works but still very exciting and good book to read. The plot does not seem very convincing. And unless the French police is that stupid I can not imagine why they think he can be guilty or even helpful.

To read or not to read the great spy novels of Eric Ambler? That is the question most people ignore because they are not familiar with Mr. Ambler and his particularly talent.

Mr. Ambler has always had this problem. As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his introduction to Intrigue (an omnibus volume containing Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, Cause for Alarm and Background to Danger), "Perhaps this was the volume that brought Mr. Ambler to the attention of the public that make best-sellers. They had been singularly inattentive until its appearance -- I suppose only God knows why." He goes on to say, "They had not even heeded the critics, who had said, from the very first, that Mr. Ambler had given new life and fresh viewpoint to the art of the spy novel -- an art supposedly threadbare and certainly cliché-infested."

So what's new and different about Eric Ambler writing? His heroes are ordinary people with whom almost any reader can identify, which puts you in the middle of a turmoil of emotions. His bad guys are characteristic of those who did the type of dirty deeds described in the book. His angels on the sidelines are equally realistic to the historical context. The backgrounds, histories and plot lines are finely nuanced into the actual evolution of the areas and events described during that time. In a way, these books are like historical fiction, except they describe deceit and betrayal rather than love and affection. From a distance of over 60 years, we read these books today as a way to step back into the darkest days of the past and relive them vividly. You can almost see and feel a dark hand raised to strike you in the back as you read one of his book's later pages. In a way, these stories are like a more realistic version of what Dashiell Hammett wrote as applied to European espionage.

Since Mr. Ambler wrote, the thrillers have gotten much bigger in scope . . . and moved beyond reality. Usually, the future of the human race is at stake. The heroes make Superman look like a wimp in terms of their prowess and knowledge. There's usually a love interest who exceeds your vision of the ideal woman. Fast-paced violence and killing dominate most pages. There are lots of toys to describe and use in imaginative ways. The villains combine the worst faults of the 45 most undesirable people in world history and have gained enormous wealth and power while being totally crazy. The plot twists and turns like cruise missile every few seconds in unexpected directions. If you want a book like that, please do not read Mr. Ambler's work. You won't like it.

If you want to taste, touch, smell, see and hear evil from close range and move through fear to defeat it, Mr. Ambler's your man.

On to Epitaph for a Spy. During the pre-World War II era, it was common for ordinary citizens to be pressed into espionage activities, whether knowingly or not. These were often wealthy yachtsmen, newspaper reporters and industrialists with connections. Mr. Ambler deliberately makes a joke of that practice by making his "spy" be one of the biggest bunglers you can imagine . . . a predecessor to Inspector Clouseau. In fact, this book is one of the few humorous spy stories. Yet the humor is like that of Shakespeare's clowns . . . to relief the tension from the horrible events happening elsewhere in the story.

To me, Epitaph for a Spy is one of Ambler's greatest accomplishments. He convincingly and appealingly combines elements that I have never seen put together in another espionage story.

It's just before the start of World War II in the south of France, not far from Toulon where the French Mediterranean fleet was docked. Josef Vadassy, a stateless "Hungarian" who works as a language teacher in Paris, is taking for him a luxurious vacation at the shore for two weeks. His only valuable possession is a wonderful camera that he is using to make artistic photographs of lizards. Usually he does his own developing, but being on vacation he wants to see how the effects of his experiments work out so he takes the film to a local chemist. When he returns to pick up the film, he's unexpectedly arrested!

The police commissaire shows him the films and asks, "Was it the lighting, Vadassy, or was it the massing of shadows that so interested you in the new fortifications outside the naval harbor of Toulon?" Shocked by the question, Vadassy looks at the prints. "Lizards, lizards, lizards. Then came a photo from what looked like one end of a concrete gallery . . . I was looking at the long, sleek barrels of siege guns."

The police soon become convinced that he did not take the photographs, but it is a question of national security to find out who did. Surely, it is someone at Vadassy's hotel. He's given the choice of being deported or helping unmask the real spy.

From there, the fun begins. Vadassy is supposed to interrogate the guests, create all kinds of excitement . . . and wander down to the public telephone where all can hear to report his progress every morning. Naturally, he's no match for the spy. The complications will keep you enjoyably mystified as you learn all about the secrets that the guests are hiding.

More seriously, you realize that the police see Vadassy as an expendable pawn in a mortal battle. Ambler wants you to see the dangers of dehumanizing enemies, friends and foes. You'll come away convinced that such "strategic" thinking makes us less secure in ways that we don't appreciate.

After you finish the book, think about parallels to today's world and how we may sometimes compromise our human compassion and spiritual dimensions by first serving "strategic" national interests. I found the issue timely.

I bought this omnibus in order to read A Coffin for Dimitrios, on some lists of the best mystery/ suspense novels of all time. However, I found it to be more wordy than I like. The very pleasant surprise was Passage of Arms, a less famous book but faster paced than Coffin, and with more deeply drawn characters, even the shady ones, and with a lighter tone throughout.

Dark Parody of Mary Webb and Stella Gibbons

The Dark Frontier is the debut novel of Eric Ambler, who contributed so much to the espionage and crime genres through such marvelous books as Background to Danger, Epitaph for a Spy, Cause for Alarm, A Coffin for Dimitrios, and Journey into Fear. Written in 1936, it was not published in the United States for several decades. The book varies quite a lot from the rest of his work, and will be less satisfying to almost any reader. Serious Ambler fans, however, would be making a mistake if they passed up this book. Seeing this effort will help them appreciate the mature Ambler talent even more.

Most Ambler fans would do well to wait to read this one until they have read all the others, because it is clearly a lesser work for several reasons. First, it is an extreme parody of two popular English novelists that Ambler fans will undoubtedly not have read. As such, some of the pleasure of reading the parody is lost. Second, the book depends in part on Ambler's concepts of what might develop in weaponry after 1936. He did pretty well for his day, but not being surprised by the astonishing conjectures of "science fiction" element of the story also causes it to lose what was powerful color for contemporary readers. Third, the plot complications are not quite as delicious as those in the later Ambler works, and are intended to be pretty transparent as part of the parody.

That having been said, the sense of local color and suspense are strong and compelling. Mr. Ambler's story telling talents come through the parody quite well. I'm glad I read it, and I'm sure you will be too.

Make your efforts as timeless and universal as you can!

Donald Mitchell
Co-Author of The 2,000 Percent Solution, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage

The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler's first novel, is often overlooked -- even by Ambler fans. This is unfortunate for, while it is not up to the standards of his subsequent novels, it is still quite good. Incidentally, although The Dark Frontier was written in the early 1930s, it involves the invention of a nuclear bomb -- one of the first (if not the first) novels on this subject.