”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 protection from prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. If he is afraid, then he must be feared, if he desires, then he must be desired. It is a screen to hide his mind’s nakedness.” In From Russia with Love James Bond reads this book to pass the time on a train.Charles Latimer, professor at a university, and like many men of his profession also a writer of espionage thrillers, was on vacation in Istanbul when he received an invitation to view the body of a notorious criminal named Dimitrios. This brush with a real criminal starts Latimer on an odyssey to build a file on Dimitrios under the guise of research for a book, but the journey was more about satisfying his own curiosity about the man. Eric Ambler, a left leaning intellectual, fully expected the Soviet Union to be an ally of Britain and his books from this period have sympathetic Soviet block characters. This book was published in 1939 just before Germany declared war on Poland. Ambler wrote five stellar thrillers between 1937 and 1940 of which this is considered his masterpiece. He continued to write after that, but could not capture the spark of his earlier writing. The must read list:Uncommon Danger (1937), US title: Background to DangerEpitaph for a Spy (1938)Cause for Alarm (1938)The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), US title: A Coffin for DimitriosJourney into Fear (1940)He influenced a whole host of scribblers that are among my favorite writers including Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John LeCarre, Alan Furst, Len Deighton, and many more. Eric Ambler the Godfather of the espionage thriller.Now Latimer is a bit of prig...well... aloof, certainly bordering on self-righteous. Ambler through a host of characters can’t help but poke some fun at Latimer. ”You see Mr. Latimer, I have read one of your books. It terrified me. There was about it an atmosphere of intolerance, of prejudice, of ferocious moral rectitude that I found quite unnerving.”Another character after a few drinks makes an observation.”You know,” he said, “you English are sublime. You are the only nation in the world that believes it has a monopoly of ordinary common sense.”As Dimitrios’s dossier grows Latimer realizes that the books he has been writing are far removed from the real world of an international criminal like Dimitrios. There is nothing in Latimer’s life that would prepare him for his exposure to the feral survival instincts that Dimitrios exhibits when he kills, blackmails, or steals for money. ”But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town. The logic of Michelangelo’s David, Beethoven’s quartets and Einstein’s physics had been replaced by that of the Stock Exchange Year Book and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” The movie version was released in 1944 starring Peter Lorre as the Charles Latimer character. They changed his nationality to Dutch probably because of Lorre’s accent. It remains faithful to the book except for the fact that the relationship between Peters and Latimer is much warmer.Latimer meets a man named Peters, but he could have been called X or Y or Z because his name is a chimera easily changed with just a swirl of the hand. They form an uneasy alliance. Latimer has his teeth firmly sunk in the story and even though he has reservations about his partner he has to see this through. Latimer wondered if he had ever before disliked anyone quite as much as he now disliked Mr. Peters. It was incredible that he should believe in this tawdry nonsense of his. Yet believe in it he obviously did. It was that belief which made the man so loathsome. If he had his tongue in his cheek he would have been a good joke. As it was he anything but a joke. His mind was divided too neatly. With one half he could peddle drugs and buy rentes and read Poems Erotiques, while with the other he could excrete a warm, sickly fluid to conceal his obscene soul. You could do nothing but dislike him.”There is a MURDER in SMYRNA. Doesn’t that roll of the tongue heavy with exotic danger?The war to end all wars was on everyone’s mind when this book was published. The looming menace of another war that would forever change the name of THE world war to the first world war was beginning to be realized. ”So many years, Europe in labour had through its pain seen for an instant a new glory, and then had collapsed to welter again in the agonies of war and fear. Governments had risen and fallen; men and women had worked, had starved, had made speeches, had fought, had been tortured, had died. Hope had come and gone, a fugitive in the scented bosom of illusion. Men had learned to sniff the heady dreamstuff of the soul and wait impassively while the lathes turned the guns for their destruction.”I found myself at times muttering to myself that Latimer needed to unbutton his collar, maybe skew his tie, and enjoy this bit of intrigue that he finds himself wrapped up in. For me the story started slow, but built nicely. I can tell this is the type of book that improves with each reading. The pacing once it gets going is nicely maintained. The characters are truly dangerous people and I began to wonder how Latimer was going to continue to ask impertinent questions without losing his nose or his life. Dimitrios is kept off screen ;and yet, his menacing apparition lurks in every paragraph. The grand finale is a pyrotechnical display of heroics, betrayal, and greed.
One night, I went out with a friend, who also reads, and met up with some of his friends, most of whom also read. I sat across from this guy who worked at a local Barnes & Noble with my friend, and this guy and I started talking books. I mentioned that I had just read my first book by Alan Furst, and that I loved how he set an espionage story in Europe on the eve of World War II. I haven't read Furst, he said, but I really like Eric Ambler. Right there, that little literary alarm went off in my head, and my nose tingled at the prospect of a new hunt. Who, I asked, leaning forward, is this Eric Ambler?You know that I went on Amazon that night and looked up Ambler's entire bibliography in print; and you know, fellow Goodreader, that I looked him up on wikipedia and skimmed through his particulars. By the time I stepped away from the computer, I knew that I would be picking up a book by Ambler in the near future. (Such restraint: back then, if I saw a book was brand-spanking new, I held off and told myself to wait for a used copy; these days, I'm not so well-behaved--hence the massive to-read shelf looming over my shoulder like a troll with a law degree and a court summons...).Eventually, I found a used Eric Ambler book, and that book was a paperback edition (different than what is pictured here, I just preferred to include my review with the lot of them) of "A Coffin for Dimitrios." Soon as I picked up that book and began reading it, I dove right in and lost myself in its dense network of treachery and cloak and dagger.That friend of my friend was right: Eric Ambler writes a great espionage story set in Europe on the eve of World War II. And the big--no, humongous--difference between him any other writer who tries to do this today is that Eric Ambler was alive and writing in Europe on the eve of World War II. The man knows how to write a good story--and he had his fingers on Europe's erratic pulse in the late 1930s, when governments kept telling themselves and each other that they would never, ever commit the same sins that they had done a few decades before, while at the same time some of them braced themselves for the second coming of the war gods and their insatiable thirst. Meanwhile, people across the continent continued to travel between countries, wielding their passports and visas with casual aplomb; families spread out with the promise of seeing each other again; businesses connected with their clients across various borders; and the general mood on the continent waxed positive, as people recovered from the horror of mass warfare and picked up the efforts and dreams that their predecessors had carried into the early 20th century.I am fascinated by this period of the 20C, and I relish any book that captures its mood and atmosphere. That Ambler not only does this, but also mixes in a complicated espionage story with believable characters who sweat and bleed and (probably) curse, makes his work a special favorite of mine. And in this book, Ambler is working at his very best. I could not consume it fast enough, and when I was done I felt like telling every person I knew to read this book. Read it now. See what life was like back then, and enjoy a helluva adventure while doing so.Thank you Lawrence (should you ever come across this), for showing the way to Eric Ambler.
What do You think about A Coffin For Dimitrios (2001)?
I was surprised by this book. Eric Ambler has been described as the thriller writer of depth and originality who paved the way for John Le Carré, Len Dieghton, and Robert Ludlum. Though this is true, though I should have, I didn’t realize that this was written in the late 1930s. Back then “thrillers” were more sophisticated, and less gut-wrenching and breathless. Folks who are a product of the “new education system” and never learned how to diagram a sentence identifying and understanding subordinate clauses, subordinating conjunctions, gerunds, etc. might find some of the sentences hard to understand. He also interjects a lot of French words and phrases into the text, many of which are idiomatic so that English to French dictionary might not provide an understandable translation.The protagonist, a mystery writer, spends the entire book traveling around Europe at his own expense on a whim to see if he has the skills to be a detective, like the ones he creates. In the end, of course he finds that the world is not like a mystery novel.Though it’s a “thriller” it’s not that hard to put down and pick up—it can even be read right before going to bed without raising your pulse or blood pressure so it’s hard to go to sleep. However, it is a fascinating description of the worldly side of Europe between the world wars. I could almost imagine being in the settings of the book it was so realistic.So if you’re looking for an adrenaline pumping thriller, this isn’t the book for you. But if you’re looking for a more classical novel where ambience, characters, and plot are equally important, this might be for you.
—Pete Jones
I'm very much enjoying this. Set in a period (right before ww2) and in an area that is familiar and unfamiliar to me (turkey, Greece, eastern Balkans) that interest me and written in a very smooth and relaxed style: no jumping around, no action, no twists and turns, while still holding the reader's commitment.(edit) Having finished it and having read the introduction, which I wish the publisher would insert it at the end of the book, I'm amazed that Ambler never set foot in the Balkans or minor Asia prior to writing this. Impressive indeed.
—Nino Frewat
Bestselling spy novelist Charles Cumming has chosen to discuss A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Espionage, saying that:"...Eric Ambler is the grandfather of the serious spy novel. Ambler was the same generation as Graham Greene, and he was, like a lot of educated people at that time, a kind of proto-Marxist, a socialist. He believed that he could use the thriller not only to entertain but also as a political tool, to say something about the state of the nation...."The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/charl...
—FiveBooks
