Beyond the Balkans
Eric Ambler and the British Espionage Novel, 1936-1940
Eric Ambler (1909-1998) was one of the foremost architects of espionage fiction as it exists today. Like his predecessor Somerset Maugham, Ambler sought to transform the genre from the verbal banality and minimal characterizations of authors William Le Queux and Edward Oppenheim to a more sophisticated, morally ambiguous world of deception and danger. Ambler also coursed the genre in another markedly different direction by moving away from the more conservative, pro-British, “King and Crown” intrigues of John Buchan to explore other, more complex political venues. As Ambler himself later said, “I looked around for something I could change and decided it was the thriller-espionage story. I decided to turn that upside down and make the heroes left wing and popular front figures.”1 To this end he was extraordinarily successful. Between the years 1936 and 1940 Ambler wrote six classic political novels: The Dark Frontier (1936), Uncommon Danger (1937), Epitaph for a Spy (1938), Cause for Alarm (1938), The Mask of Dimitros (1939), and Journey Into Fear (1940).
clipped from: calitreview.com 