Eric Ambler: From Pulp to Literature

Eric Ambler (1909-1998) is not only “unquestionably our best thriller writer”, as Graham Greene said, but also the master of the modern thriller when it involves international intrigue and espionage. Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene ran the course on the sidelines but Ambler ploughed head on. Within a few years he not only bridged the gap between serious literature and the pulp thrillers of John Buchan and Sapper but significantly overlapped it.

He was born in London, studied Engineering at London University but settled on a career as an advertising copywriter. He travelled extensively in Europe and became a full-time writer in 1937. Between 1936 and 1940 he wrote six critically acclaimed novels of intrigue which took the thriller from pulp to literature. He served in the British army (1940-46) as a film-maker with the likes of Peter Ustinov and John Huston. After the war he wrote screenplays for various films including The Passionate Friends, The Cruel Sea, A Night to Remember, The Wreck of the Mary Deare and Mutiny on the Bounty (uncredited). He married Joan Harrison, Alfred Hitchcock's screenwriter, and created an American TV show of his own: Checkmate. He also wrote twelve more highly acclaimed novels (most of which were filmed as movies or mini TV series) and five more in collaboration with Charles Rodda. He won countless literary awards including four Gold Daggers and an Edgar.

Alfred Hitchcock called him “a phenomenon”, Time Magazine “the foremost thriller writer of our time” and The New Yorker “quite simply the best”. So what made him the greatest thriller writer?

Before Ambler's books, there was a wide gap between thrillers and literature. Thrillers were formulaic, cliche-ridden pulp. The heroes were rich and right-wing with almost superhuman qualities who endorsed nationalism and xenophobia. The bad guys just evil. Here's how Ambler's first six books completely changed the scene.

The Dark Frontier (1936) is a leftist thriller containing fantasy as well as burlesque and parody. In Background to Danger (1937), we follow Desmond Kenton, an ordinary man who finds himself involved in a conspiracy that threatens European stability by being at the wrong place and the wrong time. In a realistic narrative of adventure and suspense he thwarts this threat by joining two Soviet agents. In Cause for Alarm (1938), Nicholas Marlow, an unemployed engineer, is quickly hired and sent to Mussolini's Italy to sell arms. Soon he is engulfed in prewar espionage and in pursuit and escape. In Epitaph for a Spy (1938), a Hungarian refugee is blackmailed by the French police while he is vacationing in the Riviera. Here, an incompetent 'detective' in an 'Agatha Christie environment' of a hotel with characters of various nationalities, is not looking for a murderer but an Italian spy. In The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), Ambler's masterpiece, a French author follows the legacy of Dimitrios (a blackmailer, drug-runner, murderer and spy) from 1920 to 1938 through assorted interviews and letters till he emerges as a successful businessman. Dimitrios is the symbol of the destructive forces that threaten civilization, he is in effect the shadow of Hitler. The Mask of Dimitrios became the first thriller in history to bridge the gap between pulp and literature. In Journey into Fear (1940) an armaments engineer is hunted for dear life in the closed world of a freighter between Istanbul and Venice. Here the British military-industrial evil becomes a necessity in the struggle against totalitarian tyranny in the brink of WW2.

In Ambler's first six thrillers, the good guys were innocent bystanders of average capabilities who were pitted against professionals in a meticulously realistic prewar background. Political sympathies moved from the right-wing to the left. Characters and story elements followed 'serious' fiction rather than 'pulp' patterns. Ambler's unpredictable thrillers had moved from pulp to literature. After the war, most thriller authors followed Ambler's footsteps. Without Ambler it seems unlikely that authors like Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean, Gavin Lyall, Desmond Bagley, Len Deighton and John Le Carre would have emerged. In film, Ambler's innocent bystander became the Hitchcockian hero we all know.

Ambler's twelve thrillers from his second period refined what he had invented before the war. Judgment on Deltchev (1951) explores from within the political thriller format the Stalinist show trials in Eastern Europe. In The Schirmer Inheritance (1953) an American lawyer in search of a heir discovers that the latter is a soldier of fortune operating on the Greek-Yugoslav border. The Night-Comers (1956) shows the power struggles accompanying the decolonization in South-East Asia. Passage of Arms (1959) has strong bouts of character comedy and shows how gun-running is used by various people in various ways. In The Light of Day (1962) we share the viewpoint of Arthur Abdel Simpson, an outrageous rogue and petty crook as he is blackmailed by the Turkish police to expose a terrorist organization and by an international gang to participate in an ingenious robbery of royal treasures from Istanbul. Simpson's adventures continue in Dirty Story (1967) as he develops from filming porn in Greece to becoming a reluctant mercenary in decolonized Africa. In A Kind of Anger (1964), Peter Maas, a suicidal reporter, is transformed by his love for Lucia Bernardi into a man of heroic action in an exciting narrative of pursuit, duplicity and double crossing set in the south of France. In The Intercom Conspiracy (1969) two disillusioned NATO intelligence officers manipulate a Canadian journalist in Geneva to run a money-making scam against both the CIA and the KGB without him realizing it. Presented as a collection of letters, interviews and reports the novel radically subverts the spy novel exposing the Cold War intelligence game as a paranoid fantasy. In The Levanter (1972) a British businessman, long resident in the middle East, is blackmailed by a Palestinian terrorist organization to provide the know-how in acts of terrorism. In Doctor Frigo (1974), Ernesto Castillo the son of an assassinated Latin American President is pressured by political machiavels and French intelligence to lend his name and support a coup against his better judgment. Send No More Roses (1977) explores white collar crime by following the career of an 'able criminal' and an 'able businessman' and fails to distinguish the fine line separating them. The Care of Time (1981), Ambler's last thriller, deals with the threats posed by chemical weapons and the mental instability of an autocratic Arab ruler.

Ambler's prose is simple, his characters, plots and backgrounds ring true. If you want to read an exciting thriller you can do no better than read one of his sophisticated eighteen books.