Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler

Stayin’ alive in World War II Europe

English spy novelist Eric Ambler is one of the most respected authors in the history of the genre. His novel Journey into Fear was published in 1940. The story takes place at that present time, when World War II is underway in Europe. An Englishman named Graham works as an engineer for a British arms manufacturer and travels frequently for business. He has recently completed some work in Turkey and is scheduled to depart for England the following day. On his last night in Istanbul, Graham spends the evening in a nightclub with Kopeikin, a Turkish coworker. There he strikes up a friendship with an attractive dancer and also notices a suspicious man who seems to be watching him all evening. At the end of the night, when Graham returns to his hotel room, he is startled at finding someone in his room, hidden in the dark. The mysterious stranger fires three shots at Graham, one of which grazes his hand. The would-be killer then flees out the window into the darkness.

Colonel Haki, the head of the Turkish secret police, shows up to investigate. (Haki also appeared in Ambler’s previous novel, A Coffin for Dimitrios.) Haki informs Graham that he is a target for assassination by German spies. Because of his occupation, Graham holds vital information in his head pertaining to the improvement of Turkey’s naval defenses. Killing Graham would delay those improvements for several weeks, allowing enough time for the Nazis launch an invasion of Turkey. It is imperative that Graham return safely to London, not only to save his own life but also to protect Turkey and prevent a Nazi victory over the Allies. Haki and Kopeikin change Graham’s travel plans and sneak him onto a small ship leaving Turkey for Genoa, Italy. There are about a dozen passengers on the boat, all of whom the reader becomes well-acquainted with. Although no one was supposed to know that Graham was traveling on this particular ship, he soon finds that the secret has apparently gotten out, and he is in danger of being murdered by one of his fellow passengers.

Ambler writes very realistic spy thrillers, without any pulp-fiction heroics. What makes this story compelling is that Graham acts in a realistic way to the threats he faces, and nothing happens that’s beyond the realm of reason. Nowadays, nearly every spy thriller involves potential world domination or nuclear armageddon, and every crime film is about a serial killer or a mass murder. When this novel was written, however, around the time Alfred Hitchcock made Foreign Correspondent, the killing of one person was still considered shocking and terrifying. When reading Journey into Fear, the reader lives vicariously through Graham, imagining what you would do if your own life were similarly placed in jeopardy. Graham is by no means an action hero, but he has enough courage to keep his wits about him and employ his brains for self-preservation.

Though this intimacy of scale is refreshing, for those of us raised on those James Bondish armageddon spy thrillers, it can also feel slow-paced and at times less than thrilling. Journey into Fear was adapted into a 1943 film, and the story is just right for a movie of roughly an hour and a half in length. When you spend a few days reading the book, however, it feels less than satisfying when the 270-page read is wrapped up with a climactic scene that lasts about all of two pages. That adds up to a lot of conversations with Graham’s fellow passengers that one has to sit through just for a small payoff of exciting action. Nevertheless, Ambler’s realistic style makes his espionage thrillers worthwhile. Because the reader can identify with Graham, and the perils he faces are credible, his fear and anxiety are palpably felt.

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

The Citizen Kane of spy novels

Eric Ambler (1909-1998) is a highly respected British author of spy novels whose career spanned almost half a century. A Coffin for Dimitrios, often regarded as his finest work, was published in 1939. The book has also been published as The Mask of Dimitrios, which is the title of the 1944 film adaptation starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.

Englishman Charles Latimer is a former professor of political economy turned successful writer of mystery novels. While vacationing in Istanbul he meets a Colonel Haki of the Turkish police, who happens to be a fan of his work. As the two get to talking, Haki tells Latimer about an infamous criminal named Dimitrios whose body was discovered in the Bosporus Strait. Given Latimer’s interest in crime and detective work, Haki asks Latimer if he’d like to go to the morgue to view the body. Latimer agrees. The more the writer learns about Dimitrios’s criminal career, the more intrigued he becomes. He decides to investigate Dimitrios’s past, with the idea that he might discover something that would be useful for a future novel. Latimer retraces Dimitrios’s known whereabouts, traveling from city to city looking through police records and interviewing people with some knowledge of the notorious criminal. Along the way, Latimer finds that someone else has been following the same trail and making similar inquiries into Dimitrios’s past.

The plot of the book calls to mind the classic film Citizen Kane in that the title character is dead in the opening scene, and the rest of the book is a series of glimpses into his past. Through his investigation of Dimitrios’s life, Latimer uncovers a history of espionage, drug dealing, human trafficking, and murder. These crimes are revealed almost as a series of short stories, told to Latimer by various law enforcement personnel and unsavory characters. Ambler ties these fictional flashbacks into real-life political intrigue of Europe’s interwar period. The drawback to this series of flashbacks, however, is that Latimer is never really in any danger until at least two-thirds of the way through the book. He’s not really doing any ingenious detective work, either, but rather just listening to stories that are voluntarily related to him.

There are two kinds of spy thrillers. One includes those of the highly skilled, expertly trained, killing-machine sort of hero (e.g. James Bond, Jason Bourne). The other is that of the regular guy who accidentally gets involved in an espionage plot (e.g. just about every Alfred Hitchcock movie). A Coffin for Dimitrios falls into the latter category. The problem with the regular-guy approach, however, is that if you’re regular guy is too regular, he ends up being just boring. Such is the case with Latimer, who doesn’t have much of a personality at all. He is also still somewhat bound by the literary conventions of the English gentleman, which means he’s predictably going to do the right thing. It would be interesting to see what an author like Georges Simenon could have done with this premise by adding some ungentlemanly moral ambiguity.

Overall, however, I enjoyed this novel enough to make me want to read some more of Ambler’s work. This is an intelligent, realistic espionage thriller in the vein of John Le Carré’s work. It’s not simplistic potboiler pulp fiction, but it reads very briskly and lively and doesn’t get bogged down in too much political details (unlike, perhaps, some of Le Carré’s work). If you like those old Hitchcockian thrillers of the ‘40s and ‘50s, there’s a good chance you’ll like this.