The son of entertainers, Ambler studied engineering at London University and wrote plays, before embarking on a career composing novels. As noted in The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing, “In the mid-1930s Ambler set out to redeem the then-lowest form of popular fiction, the thriller, by making it a vehicle for serious treatment of the European political situation, increasingly polarized between fascism and communism. ... In six novels between 1936 and 1940”--beginning with The Dark Frontier (1936) and concluding with 1939’s The Mask of Dimitrios (aka A Coffin for Dimitrios)--“Ambler revolutionized the thriller, bridging the gap between ‘popular’ and ‘serious,’ ‘entertainment’ and ‘literature.’”I don’t really have anything to add to that short bio of the author. So let me instead direct you to some other pieces about Ambler that have appeared in The Rap Sheet and on other sites:
Although he wrote two dozen books over his career, including Epitaph for a Spy (1938), Passage of Arms (1959), The Light of Day (1962), and Waiting for Orders (1991), some of which were turned into films, it’s usually Dimitrios that’s remembered as his greatest work--“one of the classics of spy fiction,” to quote Bruce F. Murphy from The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery.
• “Pulp Valentine: Eric Ambler and the Invention of the Spy Novel,” by Stephen Metcalf (Slate)
• “Dangerous Games,” by Thomas Jones (The Guardian)
• “Beyond the Balkans--Eric Ambler and the British Espionage Novel, 1936-1940,” by Brett F. Woods (California Literary Review)
• “The Book You Have to Read: Journey into Fear, by Eric Ambler,” by Charles Cumming (The Rap Sheet)
• “The Book You Have to Read: A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler,” by Ali Karim (The Rap Sheet)
• “Why Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios Is a Masterpiece,” by Sarah Weinman (The Wall Street Journal)
• “Eric Ambler’s Obituary from The Guardian, 1998”
(The Marxism List)
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