A Coffin for Dimitrios (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) [Paperback]

I rarely get sucked into reading novels more than once, but this was an exception. Why? Well, I've thought of two reasons.

The first is that, as a story, it's totally spellbinding. Like all good stories, it tells itself. Once Latimer is hooked on his investigation, so are you. We follow him every step of the way. We get to sense all his anxieties, his self-justifications, his decisions that aren't really decisions. And like him, all we can really do is wait for the whole adventure to unreel, which it does at a nicely tense and unhurried pace.

The second reason is that despite having all the tension and excitement of a thriller, that isn't really, or isn't only, what the book is. It's in fact (rather like a 'proper' novel) a study of people, who they really are, who they think they are, and what it is that really motivates them. The characters are deliciously unheroic. They're people who get themselves into messes, which they may or may not be able to get out of. They're intellectually and morally flawed. They're real.

Ambler was young when he wrote this book and you get the sense that in it he is confronting the issue that the world (and everyone in it)is uglier than we are deceived into believing. Latimer, out of his world, becomes a dreamy idealist suddenly scrambling around in the dirt. The conflict is wonderfully perceived and comes with a final 'ironic suggestion' - that the only way to survive such ugliness is to pretend that it doesn't exist. It is this conflict, I feel, that gives the novel the electricity and charm which is absent from Ambler's later work.

There are other early Ambler novels with wonderful sequences but the novels themselves, although in their way just as intriguing, are not so well structured and are not driven by such a powerful narrative. This one, for me, is his masterpiece. It is staggering (and slightly disturbing)to think that until recently in the UK it was out of print.

Mr. Ambler has always had this problem. As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his introduction to Intrigue (an omnibus volume containing Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, Cause for Alarm and Background to Danger), "Perhaps this was the volume that brought Mr. Ambler to the attention of the public that make best-sellers. They had been singularly inattentive until its appearance -- I suppose only God knows why." He goes on to say, "They had not even heeded the critics, who had said, from the very first, that Mr. Ambler had given new life and fresh viewpoint to the art of the spy novel -- an art supposedly threadbare and certainly cliché-infested."

So what's new and different about Eric Ambler writing? His heroes are ordinary people with whom almost any reader can identify, which puts you in the middle of a turmoil of emotions. His bad guys are characteristic of those who did the type of dirty deeds described in the book. His angels on the sidelines are equally realistic to the historical context. The backgrounds, histories and plot lines are finely nuanced into the actual evolution of the areas and events described during that time. In a way, these books are like historical fiction, except they describe deceit and betrayal rather than love and affection. From a distance of over 60 years, we read these books today as a way to step back into the darkest days of the past and relive them vividly. You can almost see and feel a dark hand raised to strike you in the back as you read one of his book's later pages. In a way, these stories are like a more realistic version of what Dashiell Hammett wrote as applied to European espionage.

Since Mr. Ambler wrote, the thrillers have gotten much bigger in scope . . . and moved beyond reality. Usually, the future of the human race is at stake. The heroes make Superman look like a wimp in terms of their prowess and knowledge. There's usually a love interest who exceeds your vision of the ideal woman. Fast-paced violence and killing dominate most pages. There are lots of toys to describe and use in imaginative ways. The villains combine the worst faults of the 45 most undesirable people in world history and have gained enormous wealth and power while being totally crazy. The plot twists and turns like cruise missile every few seconds in unexpected directions. If you want a book like that, please do not read Mr. Ambler's work. You won't like it.

If you want to taste, touch, smell, see and hear evil from close range and move through fear to defeat it, Mr. Ambler's your man.

On to A Coffin for Dimitrios. During the pre-World War II era, it was common for ordinary citizens to be pressed into espionage activities, whether knowingly or not. Many people rate A Coffin for Dimitrios to be the greatest novel built around that theme. Almost everyone agrees that it is Mr. Ambler's best novel.

Charles Latimer began his career as a lecturer in political economy at a minor English University and wrote three scholar volumes. Suffering from depression from his studies of the Nazis in the third volume, He wrote a successful detective story and was soon launched on a career as a writer that took him away from academia. A chance trip to Turkey after an illness in Athens causes him to meet a real policeman, Colonel Haki, who is a fan of his stories. They meet for lunch to discuss the colonel's literary ambitions. Casually, the colonel shares the dossier of a criminal, Dimitrios Markropoulos, to make the point that "the murderer in a roman policier [is] much more sympathetic than a real murderer." The dossier is filled with probable crimes with lots of gaps in time and knowledge between locations and crimes. Latimer learns that Dimitrios is now lying dead in the morgue, and develops an odd compulsion to see him. The colonel complies and Latimer decides he wants to know all about the dead man. The bulk of the story relates to finding the man behind the dossier through talking with his former associates. As the detection follows, new mysteries appear and Latimer finds himself in the middle of something much larger than himself.

For those who like complicated plots, this book is a delight. Each stage of the search for Dimitrios is like a separate short story that asks and answers a piece of the mystery. Some will undoubtedly see the links from one of these short stories to the next as sometimes being on the flimsy side. That's intended, rather than being a flaw. The larger theme of this book is about the weird appearance of the hand of Providence in our lives. But it's Providence viewed with a sense of humor. As the book begins, Mr. Ambler notes that "if there should be such as thing as a superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human efficiency. The choice of Latimer as its instrument could have been made only by an idiot."

After you finish enjoying the delightful story, please consider where else you are comfortable reading books set in the past for their observations about that past that are universal and timeless. For instance, does King Lear, or Hamlet speak to you today even though their settings are long since gone?

Compact, amusingly cynical little sentences such as the above bubble up throughout Eric Ambler's "A Coffin for Dimitrios" and, in fact, throughout most of Ambler's books. That is just one reason why Ambler's books are so enjoyable and have held up so well over time.

For those not familiar with his work, Ambler was to the modern British spy novel what Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were to the American detective novel. Ambler transformed the spy novel from a simplistic black and white world of perfect good guys versus nefarious bad guys into a far more realistic world where sometimes the difference between good and evil is not all that great.

Typically, Ambler would take an unassuming, unsuspecting spectator and immerse him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre-World War II Europe. The result was a series of highly entertaining and satisfying books that many believe set the stage for the likes of le Carre, Deighton, and, most recently, Alan Furst. A Coffin for Dimitrios was one of Ambler's best known works. (It was made into a movie starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.) It is a very entertaining read.

The plot is relatively easy to follow. Charles Lattimer is a British University professor who retired from academia once he discovered that writing mass market detective stories was far more lucrative. While on holiday in Istanbul he makes the acquaintance of a Turkish police inspector who is an admirer of Lattimer's work. Lattimer is invited to the policeman's office where he is provided with ideas for a book the police officer is writing. While there he is invited to join the officer in viewing the body of a master criminal, Dimitrios, who has just been fished out of the Bosporus. Lattimer, fascinated by sketchy but lurid details of Dimitrios criminal career, decides to trace Dimitrios steps in the hopes that he will obtain new material for future detective stories. Lattimer travels from Turkey to Greece, Bulgaria, Switzerland and France in search of background information. Of course, anyone seeking such information in the corridors of the criminal underworld immediately becomes the object of attention, some of it quite dangerous. The story of Dimitrios' life is peeled away like an onion. Bits of information are revealed at each stop. Lattimer discovers that Dimitrios' actions sometimes had a sinister political connection. As the novel reaches its climax the final bits of information needed to complete the puzzle that is Dimitrios are revealed.

A Coffin For Dimitrios made for an excellent read. Some readers may find it a bit quaint. Some may find Ambler's prose a bit old-fashioned. But when one considers that Ambler's books were written close to 70 years ago I don't think it particularly fair to harp overly much on a writing or prose-style that doesn't quite match that of a le Carre or Deighton. A Coffin for Dimitrios and most of the rest of Ambler's works have been re-issued in new paperback editions by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Press. They are in print and readily available. I don't hesitate to recommend A Coffin for Dimitrios or any of Ambler's works. They are perfect for leisure reading whether at the beach or elsewhere. Last, if you have enjoyed the works of John le Carre, Deighton, Ian Fleming, or Alan Furst, it is worth a trip to Ambler to see one of their literary ancestors in action.