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Top
crime writers:Eric
Amber
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Eric Ambler (1909-1998) - joint pseudonym
Eliot Reed with Charles Rodda
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English author, widely regarded with
Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene as one of the pionerers of
stories of espionage and crime. Ambler published 19 novels under
his own name and collaborated on four novels with Charles Rodda
under the pseudonym Eliot Reed. Among Ambler's best works is THE
MASK OF DIMITROS (1939), where a complex series of discoveries
leads the hero, Charles Latimer, a British detective-story writer,
to the realization that the man named Dimitrios is still alive
and dangerous. During Latimer's search Ambler made allusions to
the political situation in the Balkans, adding authenticity to
the basic tale - topicality also played great role in Ambler's
other works.
"Besides,
here was real murder; not neat, tidy book-murder with corpse and
clues and suspects and hangman, but murder over which a chief
of police shrugged his shoulders, wiped his hands and consigned
the stinking victim to a coffin. Yes, that was it. It was real.
Dimitros was or had been real. Here were no strutting paper figures,
but tangible evocative men and women, as real as Proudhon, Montesquieu
and Rosa Luxemburg." (from The Mask of Dimitros)
Ambler was born in London. His parents had been entertainers and
Ambler also toured himself in the late 1920s as a music-hall comedian
and wrote plays. From 1924 to 1927 he studied engineering at London
University and then took up an apprenticeship in engineering.
Later he worked in advertising and by 1937 he was the director
of a London ad agency. After resigning he moved to Paris for some
time and devoted himself to writing.
Between the years 1936 and 1940 Ambler wrote six
classic thriller novels: THE DARK FRONTIER (1936), UNCOMMON DANGER
(1937), EPITAPH FOR A SPY (1938), CAUSE FOR ALARM (1938), The
Mask of Dimitros (1939), and JOURNEY INTO FEAR (1940), in which
an unwitting bystander, Mr Graham, ends up being hunted across
wartime Europe. Graham is an engineer working for an arms company
and on his business trip to Istambul he finds himself in the middle
of a nightmare. Unknow pursuers are threatening his life for unknown
reasons. "Death, he told himself, would not be so bad. A
moment of astonishment, and it would be over. He had to die sooner
or later, and a bullet through the base of the skull would be
better than months of illness when he was old." (from Journey
into Fear)
In these novels Ambler developed the succesful
formula, where the main character, usually an ordinary Englishman,
is drawn into a web of international espionage and intrigue. In
his earlier works Ambler expressed leftitst sympathies, saying
"it is not important who pulled the trigger but who paid
for the bullets".
In 1938 Ambler became a script consultant for
Alexander Korda. During World War II he joined the Royal Artillery
as a private, but was then assigned to a combat photographic unit.
Ambler served in Italy, and was made assistant director of army
cinematography in the British War Office. By the end of the war,
he was a lieutenant colonel and was awarded an American Bronze
Star.
After the war Ambler went to work as a screenwriter
for the Rank Organisation. Between the years 1940 and 1951 he
wrote no thrillers, but after the silence he published a series
of novels with Charles Rodda under the pseudonym Eliot Reed. In
the 1960s Ambler moved to Hollywood, where he created the TV shows
Checmate and The Most Deadly Game.
"You
might go to the end of your days believing that some things couldn't
possibly happen to you, that death could only come to you with
the sweet reason of disease or an 'act of God', but it was there
just the same, waiting to make nonsense of all your comfortable
ideas about your relations with time and chance, ready to remind
you - in case you had forgotten - that civilization was a word
and that you still lived in the jungle." (from Journey Into
Fear, 1940)
From 1969 Ambler lived 16 years in Switzerland and then returned
to England. His memoirs HERE LIES ERIC AMBLER, appeared in 1981.
Many of his novels have been filmed. He married twice, the second
time to Joan Harrison, who worked as an assistant to the film
director Alfred Hitchcock, collaborating among others on screenplays
for Jamaica Inn and Rebecca, both adapted from the novels by Daphne
Du Maurier.
In 1959, 1962, 1967 and 1972 Ambler received the
Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers Association and
a Diamond Dagger for life achievement in 1986. He won Edgar Award
of The Mystery Writers of America in 1964 and was named as Grand
Master in 1975 by the same organisation. He also received literary
awards from Sweden and France. In 1981 Ambler was named an Officer
of the Order of the British Empire. Eric Amber died in London
on October 22, 1998.
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