The Levanter by Eric Ambler

First published in 1972; published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard on December 11, 2012; published digitally by Agora Books on August 23, 2015

Eric Ambler is one of the fathers of the modern thriller. The Levanter was published near the end of his writing career. The novel won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award.

Lewis Prescott is a foreign correspondent based in Paris. On a trip to Lebanon, he is offered the opportunity to interview a Palestinian leader named Salah Ghaled. The invitation comes from Melanie Hammad, who met Prescott and his wife in Paris. Ghaled leads a splinter group that has been condemned by the PLO, the PFLP, and the governments of Jordan and Lebanon. Prescott worries that profiling him will elevate the stature of a man who is unrepresentative of the Palestinian guerrilla movement, but his editor is curious to know how Ghaled’s group is being financed.

As the interview is being conducted, Michael Howell is in Syria, dealing with his family business, a wide-ranging enterprise that deals in agriculture, shipping and international trade. Howell’s Syrian assets have been frozen. He makes a number of business deals with the Syrians in an effort to recoup his losses. I don’t have a head for business but I enjoyed reading about Howell’s strategies. Ambler adds credibility to the story with details about mundane topics such as ceramic production, the differences between dry and wet batteries, and how to clean barnacles from a large schooner. How Ambler managed to make all of that interesting I can’t explain, but he does.

Howell eventually discovers that his difficulty earning a profit is the least of his problems. Circumstances beyond his control place Howell and one of his factories under the control of terrorist Ghaled. Howell soon finds himself in the middle of a plot against Israel. Whether he cooperates or not, his future does not look bright. The novel’s tension builds with Howell’s frustration as people who should show an interest in helping him appear to be indifferent to whether he lives or dies.

Most of the novel is focused on Howell, a character who finds himself caught in an impossible situation. Prescott’s contribution to the story is to offer an objective view of Howell’s actions, given that Howell’s primary concern (apart from staying alive) is the future of his family business.

The plot is not overtly political but it does take a pointed view of how nations and groups seek to blame each other, and to seek reprisals against nations, for private actions taken by individuals that are not sanctioned by any government. That isn’t fair to anybody and it isn’t useful, but it is how the world worked when The Levanter was written and it remains an accurate view of how the world works today.

The novel’s pace increases steadily as it moves from a story of thought to one of action. I enjoyed The Levanter for its wealth of detail and for its conflicted characters, while the plot stands up nicely given the continuing relevance of stories about terrorism.

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Background to Danger by Eric Ambler

First published in 1937

Everywhere Kenton goes, he seems to have the misfortune of finding a dead body with a knife protruding from its back. The police believe Kenton is responsible for at least one of the deaths, so he is on the run. His only chance to prove his innocence lies in recovering the photographs that a stranger gave him while he was on a train to Austria -- photographs he no longer possesses. Unfortunately for Kenton, at least two adversaries are also determined to find the photographs. As Kenton makes his way from Nuremberg to Linz to Prague, a journey that becomes more desperate by the minute, he tries to puzzle out the relationships between the various parties who are after the photographs. Along the way, he attempts to anticipate their next moves, the better to survive the journey.

This formula -- an innocent man caught in a web of intrigue must use his wits to save himself while thwarting the evildoers -- is the sort of thing that Alfred Hitchcock loved to film (Background to Danger was, in fact, filmed in 1943, but by Raoul Walsh). Background to Danger has all the hallmarks of a black-and-white Hitchcock film: a brooding atmosphere, a strong sense of place, quirky characters, sharp dialog, and suspense that begins to build from the opening scene. Yet the plot wasn't formulaic when Eric Ambler wrote Background to Danger; Ambler is one of the formula's originators, and writers who subsequently followed the formula have rarely done it better than Ambler.

The plot (as we learn in the prologue, it all has to do with oil) is complex without becoming convoluted. Action scenes alternate with chapters that engage the intellect, producing a story that drives forward at a brisk pace without ever becoming mindless. Ambler didn't feel the need to bog down the text with unnecessary verbiage as have so many of his successors; the story is tight. This isn't Eric Ambler's best novel (my favorite so far is A Coffin for Dimitrios) but it is more entertaining than most of the thrillers written in more recent decades.

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The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

First published in 1962

Arthur Simpson--petty thief, unemployed journalist, and occasional tourist guide--is one of Eric Ambler's finest creations. The son of an Egyptian mother and British father, Simpson is embittered by the unwillingness of either nation to claim him as one of its own.

When caught in the act of burglarizing a hotel room in Athens, Simpson is blackmailed into driving a Lincoln to Istanbul. Of course, the plan does not go well for Simpson, who soon finds himself caught between the schemers who induced him to make the trip and the Turkish police, who want to use him for their own ends. This well-paced thriller is sprinkled with moments of levity, nicely balancing the darkness that enshrouds Simpson as he becomes embroiled in a criminal plot. While the criminal characters are not as fully developed as Simpson, the novel works because Ambler makes the reader see the world through Simpson's eyes and feel his mounting sense of dread as events unfold.

Ambler creates an effective atmosphere.  Even when there seems to be little action, Ambler keeps the story in motion -- there's always something happening that holds the reader's attention.  There are elements of a mystery in the story as Simpson tries to discover the purpose of driving the Lincoln to Istanbul, but that secret is revealed well before the novel's end. At that point, suspense builds as Simpson finds himself caught between the desires of the police and the crooks. The suspense is palpable, and for that reason I recommend The Light of Day as a true thriller.

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