Review: Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler
[ File Alongside: The Wreck of the Mary Deare, The African Queen ]
Not really a review, just a quick mention. Eric Ambler was one of John Le Carré‘s influences. As well as quite well-written spy-thrillers, he made a decent career writing screenplays for Hollywood. I was amused to note that his screenplay credits include The Wreck of the Mary Deare, based on the novel by Hammond Innes recently loaned to me by Eugene (and a ripping good yarn it is too).
Ambler’s work is very British, but to his credit, it is very European too. One feels he would be a Remainer in the Brexit debate. His characters are suave cosmopolitan people, usually with some mastery of a European language or two. Their conversation is the stuff of black-and-white B-movies, quite a delight on the written page; you can easily picture a Robert Donat or Cary Grant in the rôle. I must be getting nostalgic – I also clocked up C.S. Forrester’s The African Queen this year!
Cause for Alarm was written in 1938, and anticipates WWII. It is nice to read about the years leading up to the war in a book written before the war was a fact. Just writing this reminds me of The Riddle of the Sands, another book anticipating a world war, written by our own Erskine Childers and surely one of my all-time favourite thrillers.
This is easy old-fashioned summer reading.
Asynchronists 