Summary
Almost as pleasing, and a little more surprising, was a eulogy in the Times by Michael Gove, who called Ambler, quite accurately, "one of the most underrated 20th-century writers", and praised him for illuminating the politics of the time: "The violent seediness of Italian Fascism, the precarious legitimacy of Balkan thrones, the shabby, compromised but essential decency of democratic Britain and Third Republic France, and the romantic appeal of communism as the most uncompromisingly vigorous element in the popular front against dictatorship; all the confused reactions of that time are rendered with conviction." The novel that followed Uncommon Danger, Epitaph for a Spy (1938), also inverts a genre convention - it is a typical English country-house mystery with a closed circle of suspects, which happens to be set in a small hotel on the French Riviera and to feature a cast of foreigners (the only British character is a pathetic and not entirely trustworthy old soldier).
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Extract
Socialism and Suspense
The 100th anniversary of Eric Ambler's birth on 28 June has produced a number of tributes. The most pleasing has been Penguin's reissue of five of his best spy thrillers as Modern Classics, with introductions by fans such as James Fenton and Norman Stone, and black-and-white photographic covers gorgeously evocative of their era and milieu - dingy, war-shadowed industrial Europe in the late 1930s.
Almost as pleasing, and a little more surprising, was a eulogy in the Times by Michael Gove, who called Amble...See the full content of this document
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