Writeology

Read: Journey into Fear, Eric Ambler

Ambler’s not necessarily a household name like Hammett or Chandler, but in the field of espionage thrillers, he’s one of the grand masters. Before he died in 1998, Ambler had written 18 novels on his own (five more under a pseudonym with a co-author) and a few short story collections. A couple of his books were turned into films, including Journey into Fear (sadly, neither Netflix or my local library had a copy), which follows the story of English weapons engineer Graham returning home from Istanbul. The naive Graham gets caught up in a mess of intrigue, with Nazi assassins gunning for him aboard an Italian freighter. As a page-turner, it’s thoroughly entertaining even today, even if Ambler’s prose doesn’t quite have the same memorable nature as Chandler or Hammett.