No movies for me over the big L-tryptophanic weekend. I spent it luxuriating in the
novels of Eric Ambler, the daddy of all thriller writers. Never
a huge fan of genre fiction, I’d read some of the mystery and spy classics by the usual
suspects — Hammett, Chandler, le Carré, Forsythe, Leonard and a few others — but I’d never read
anything by Ambler. A terrible admission, but there it is.
My friend Mugs McGuiness, the best-read bookman I know, politely hid his embarrassment at
my ignorance and gave me a primer. “The guy wrote 18 novels, all worth reading because of his
wit and craftmanship and sense of wherever the real action was,” Mugs said. “But after ‘Judgment
on Deltchev’ (1951), they lack urgency. He had been labeled a thriller writer extraordinaire, even
though he was a great and prescient writer. Compare ‘Journey Into Fear’ (1940) with what
Americans were doing then, with their pathetic schoolboy Marxism and self-pitying family
histories à la Farrell. The gulf of sophistication and technique is vast.”
Mugs continued:
Ambler was born in London in 1909. He was an autodidact in a family of
vaudeville performers. A man of the left, he became disillusioned with all political ideas and,
finally, humanity. I saw him once on the old “Today” show being interviewed by Hugh Downs.
Hugh, in the incomparable Hugh manner, asked what he had learned from his vast experience.
Ambler replied that, “alas, men must fight, and when all is said and done, the species is scum.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Eric Ambler. And now back to Betsy.” And that was that.
I don’t know of any one else like him — Conrad was able to dream up the world of Russian
anarchists wonderfully in “Under Western Eyes,” but he was a hugely sophisticated and travelled
man in his 50’s, and Conrad is more generic than specific. Ambler had been to Paris. He had
brilliance, insight into cornered men, maps, The London Times, and the weeklies, those and an
almost supernatural feel for the zeitgeist. His first novel, “The Dark Frontier” (1935 ) predicts the
atomic bomb and what it would mean. He does it on the side, a kid writing advertising copy. He
has no true ancestors.
Conrad and Buchan are king-and-country boys. Ambler is the huge step into the modern
world. “Cause for Alarm” (1939) and “Background to Danger” (1937) and “Epitaph for a Spy”
(1938) lead up to the virtuoso “Journey Into Fear” (1940). “A Coffin For Demetrios” (1939) is
even better. After you’ve read the guy there’s no doubt this is the last word on the Balkans — the
bizarre Byzantintine intrigue and complexity of the place, the smell, the decaying ancient
buildings. Ambler was never there until after he’d written the novels. He intuited the whole
fucking scene from newspapers and magazines. Imagination, they used it call it. I mean, Melville
didn’t have to be a whale to write “Moby Dick.”
For years on dust-jackets they used a haunting photo of Ambler, in the fog and darkness,
dressed in an overcoat, cigarette in his hand, looking at the camera with keen sceptical attention
from a world saved from night only by the dim streetlight above him. He edited and introduced a
fascinating collection of spy stories, “To Catch A Spy” (1965), all chosen for their lack of
Bondian cheap thrills and romance, but all notable for a palpable sense of dread.
During the war (WWII) Ambler became attached to the British film unit, with Carol Reed and
a mess of other dandies, and fell in love with the movies. He became a first-rate screenwriter with
16 produced screenplays and some Academy Award nominations under his belt before he packed
that in and settled on the coast, looking at the Pacific and searching for something pacific. A book
of essays called “The Ability To Kill” and a collection of short stories fill in the menu before his
last book, an autobiography “Here Lies Eric Ambler” (1981). Quite a
guy.
I said Mugs concealed his embarrassment at my ignorance, but he did take offense at my use
of the word “genre.” Mugs, who is usually a gentleman, couldn’t help snickering. OK, he nearly
laughed in my face: “Is Dostoevsky a mystery guy because he wrote ‘Crime and Punishment’? Is
Chuck D a master of the supernatural because he wrote the best ghost story? Isn’t Ross
MacDonald a very good California novelist? Is Chandler just a mystery guy? Ambler truly
invented the modern novel of intrigue and suspense. Le Carré is a humble descendent, as I’m sure
he’d admit.”
