Cause for Alarm

I highly recommend this novel. Ambler is at his best. A great spy story with Ambler's average Joe who gets caught up in intrigue but perseveres and overcomes.

And dead men's cries do fill the empty air . . . I say, come forth, and fight with me! These words of Warwick from Shakespeare's Henry VII, Part II seem a very appropriate theme for Eric Ambler's "Cause for Alarm". First published in 1938, when the Second World War had not officially started, Cause for Alarm painted a picture of a world where the dying had already begun, albeit in the streets and alleys of Europe if not yet on the battlefield. For those not familiar with his work, Ambler was to the modern British spy novel what Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were to the American detective novel. Ambler transformed the spy novel from a simplistic black and white world of perfect good guys versus nefarious bad guys into a far more realistic world where sometimes the difference between good and evil is not all that great. Typically, Ambler would take an unassuming, unsuspecting spectator and immerse him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre-World War II Europe. The result was a series of highly entertaining and satisfying books that many believe set the stage for the likes of le Carre, Deighton, and, most recently, Alan Furst. "Cause for Alarm" follows Ambler's typical plot line. Nicky Marlow is a recently laid-off English engineer. He is also recently engaged. His search for employment grows increasingly frustrated until he answers and advertisement for what appears to be a somewhat down-at-the heels machine tool company. Despite being told that that the company (the aptly named Spartacus Machine Tool Co.) sells machine tools used in the armaments industry and is profitably engaged in selling its equipment to Italian `military-industrial complex' Marlow accepts a position as the company's Italian sales agent. No sooner does Marlow arrive in Italy than he is swept up into a web of death and intrigue. He soon finds his predecessor was murdered and finds himself in the cross-hairs of the OVRA (fascist Italy's secret police), a `general' who may be either a Yugoslav or German spy, and Soviet secret agents. It seems as if everyone is telling Marlow, "come forth and fight with me." Marlow, at first at least, has buried his head in the sands and ignore the moral implications of his work. He is just doing his job, or so he says more than once. As mentioned the basic outline of an Ambler novel, the innocent Brit caught in a web of sinister, cynical European intrigue, may be found in Cause for Alarm. However, the pleasure of reading Ambler is not just for the plot but for his keen eye for detail, his vivid but realistic prose (Ambler writes in a world where black and white is overwhelmed by shades of grey), and his ability to place his `small characters' and their problems in the context of a world about to go mad yet again. You won't find easy answers in an Ambler novel and you won't always find a knight in shining armor riding off into the sunset with `his lady'. If you like well-written, realistic novels set in pre-war

This novel has all the suspense, all the action -- and all the humor -- of other Eric Ambler novels. It also features one of my favorite fictional characters -- the Russian agent Andreas P. Zaleshoff. If you like spy fiction, this one's for you.

To read or not to read the great spy novels of Eric Ambler? That is the question most people ignore because they are not familiar with Mr. Ambler and his particularly talent. Mr. Ambler has always had this problem. As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his introduction to Intrigue (an omnibus volume containing Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, Cause for Alarm and Background to Danger), "Perhaps this was the volume that brought Mr. Ambler to the attention of the public that make best-sellers. They had been singularly inattentive until its appearance -- I suppose only God knows why." He goes on to say, "They had not even heeded the critics, who had said, from the very first, that Mr. Ambler had given new life and fresh viewpoint to the art of the spy novel -- an art supposedly threadbare and certainly cliché-infested."So what's new and different about Eric Ambler writing? His heroes are ordinary people with whom almost any reader can identify, which puts you in the middle of a turmoil of emotions. His bad guys are characteristic of those who did the type of dirty deeds described in the book. His angels on the sidelines are equally realistic to the historical context. The backgrounds, histories and plot lines are finely nuanced into the actual evolution of the areas and events described during that time. In a way, these books are like historical fiction, except they describe deceit and betrayal rather than love and affection. From a distance of over 60 years, we read these books today as a way to step back into the darkest days of the past and relive them vividly. You can almost see and feel a dark hand raised to strike you in the back as you read one of his book's later pages. In a way, these stories are like a more realistic version of what Dashiell Hammett wrote as applied to European espionage. Since Mr. Ambler wrote, the thrillers have gotten much bigger in scope . . . and moved beyond reality. Usually, the future of the human race is at stake. The heroes make Superman look like a wimp in terms of their prowess and knowledge. There's usually a love interest who exceeds your vision of the ideal woman. Fast-paced violence and killing dominate most pages. There are lots of toys to describe and use in imaginative ways. The villains combine the worst faults of the 45 most undesirable people in world history and have gained enormous wealth and power while being totally crazy. The plot twists and turns like cruise missile every few seconds in unexpected directions. If you want a book like that, please do not read Mr. Ambler's work. You won't like it. If you want to taste, touch, smell, see and hear evil from close range and move through fear to defeat it, Mr. Ambler's your man. On to Cause for Alarm. The book begins powerfully with a prologue, Death in Milan. A man is waiting to follow an Englishman in the cold. The Englishman appears and crosses the street. A large limousine accelerates violently into him, running him ov

Absolutely gripping first two -thirds of the book. Wonderfully draws you into its world, and takes you into the twists and turns of the spy world. However, the final third is a major let-down. Probably because we are jaded now, but the reversion to straight story in the last furlong was a marked dissapointment after the stirring middle section.