The English thriller writer Eric Ambler (1909-1998) is undergoing a revival – five of his classic novels from the 1930s have recently been republished by Penguin Classics. Ambler was called “our greatest thriller writer” by Graham Greene, who wasn’t bad at it himself, and Ambler is often cited as the precursor to writers such as John le Carre.



I’ve just read Ambler’s A Coffin for Demetrios (1939) and despite the obvious period touches (people communicating by ‘pneumatique’,… Continue