Doctor Frigo

You could almost say Eric Ambler started what John Le Carre finished, and I would agree if it weren't for the fact that I've never encountered a dull paragraph in any of the eight or ten Eric Ambler spy novels I've read - from Cause for Alarm (written in 1938) to Doctor Frigo (written in 1974). Whereas, when I finally read Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold last year, I was so bored I can't recall if I finished it. However, it was Le Carre's A Constant Gardener that reminded me to resume my Eric Ambler reading odyssey, because in fact the book reminded me of the master's style, much to Le Carre's credit. The intrigues in Doctor Frigo take place in the early 1970's mainly on St. Paul, a typical post-colonial island in the French Antilles in the Caribbean. The lead character is a physician and a native, Ernesto Castillo, called Doctor Frigo by many, whose father was a liberal/socialist who was briefly in power before being assassinated twelve years previously. The plot revolves around the return to the island of a leading figure from Doctor Castillo's father's political party, to establish his bona fides to take over the government. This politician is named Don Manual Villegas, and he arrives from Mexico where he had spent the twelve years exiled by the junta that overthrew the narrator's father and by the "civilian oligarchy" which superseded it. The latter is falling; a rich offshore oil field has become potentially greatly profitable due to rising international oil prices; and a large private oil consortium, as well as the French government, is concerned. But the concerns of Doctor Frigo are more personal: was Don Manual Villegas involved in or even responsible for the assassination of his father, and what will he do if he learns the answer is "yes"? Further, once Castillo discovers that circumstances will not permit him to be simply the truthful, disinterested and contented physician that he is, is he being being set up, and by whom? Which is only background. I say "only" because Ambler's true foreground is his marvelous descriptions of his characters and renderings of their conversations. As the book opens, the reader is struck forcefully by Castillo's intelligence, meticulousness, and foresight; but then with each new character whom the author introduces, the Doctor is portrayed as quite out of his element with yet another person. Including the pompous local police commissaire; the unflappable intelligence officer from France; the slimy representative of the international oil cartel; and the personages - intelligence, governmental, and clerical - of the remnants of the civilian oligarchy; as well as many others, including the Doctor's lover, a Hapsburg Dynasty expert-and-descendant who repeatedly mocks him by attributing to him the characteristics of various long-deceased idiots and incompetents of that most pertinacious royal house. The ending comes as a resolution, not a surprise. And on the next-to-last page, Eric A

To read or not to read the great espionage 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's 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 many 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, Middle Eastern and Central American political intrigue and 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.Doctor Frigo was first published in 1974 by Antheneum, and is one of Mr. Ambler's most psychologically nuanced works. In Doctor Frigo we have the contrast between the reserved, self-contained man living in exile and