”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 p...
Having authored A Coffin for Dimitrios, and The Light of Day, Eric Ambler is known as one of the father’s of the thriller. Since I have read A Coffin for Dimitrios, and seen Topkapi, the film version of The Light and Day, I decided to read one of Ambler’s less well-known books, Epitaph for a Spy....
tEric Ambler. That’s worth five stars by itself. The Light of Day (1962) is that rarest of enjoyments, a successful comedic thriller. Many writers can do thrillers good, bad, and forgotten, but very few can do a thriller with such an infectious sense of humor. tArthur Abdul Simpson, Ambler’s rog...
This is one of Eric Ambler's first spy novels, and it's just OK. A silly plot that hasn't aged well. A broke but honorable British journalist risks life and limb in 1937 Europe to restore stolen documents from some bad guys to some good guys. The bad guys are the international oil business, in ...
Antivirale Eccellente avventura meno cerebrale di LeCarr�, meno pirotecnica di Fleming ma col grandissimo mestiere misurato e temperato di Ambler. Parte a fatica, scegliendo la forma inusuale del doppio memoriale di un giornalista esperto in questioni mediorientali - il guazzabuglio etno-politico...
I've read so many beautifully written books lately that this was disappointing. It's adequately written yet it never sings. Still, the plot, once it gets going, is damn good, and the writer has a wonderful command of real-world intrigue. The protagonist, who is a playwright working as a journalis...
This was a pleasant read for a number of reasons.First, Eric Ambler is apparently considered by many espionage writers to be the founding father of the field. John le Carré (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) described him as "the source on which we all draw." Second...
This is a high-tension thriller with little of the lyricism I look for in a narrative, to balance the action.Instead there was delicious irony and wry humour --but not enough to really balance out the nerve wracking tension and pace of it. So, on a personal level, it was not wholly to my liking...
Arthur Abdel Simpson is middle-aged, stateless and desperately in need of a new passport. Neither the Egyptians want him, the land of his mother, nor the British, the land of his father and where he was educated. As Her Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul in Athens says, "You're a disgusting creature...
Actually, I didn't read very far into this book. The nearly exclusive use of dialogue, boring dialogue at that, became annoying enough that I finally decided to give it up and move on to another book. I read "The Mask of Demetrios" (originally "The Coffin of Demetrios") about a year ago, and love...
A fascinating spy vs. spy story in which a couple of European directors of intelligence decide to pay for their retirement by purchasing a newsletter called Intercom and making it publish little intelligence tidbits that none of the intelligence services wanted to see disseminated. The story take...