Epitaph for a Spy

Beware of minor spoilers in other reviews here! With that out of the way, Epitaph For A Spy is an excellent book. It's not quite a spy thriller, at least not of the common type. The protagonist, Josef Vadassy, is a vacationing teacher and amateur photographer who finds himself questioned by police when the film he has developed locally is found to contain shots of a restricted naval base. A man from Naval Intelligence knows Vadassy is innocent -- the victim of a mix-up -- but demands that he find the true culprit. Vadassy is a stateless person hoping to obtain citizenship; he will be deported and left with nowhere to go if he does not cooperate. Naval Intelligence knows that the spy is another guest at Vadassy's hotel, and this sets up the closed circle mystery that makes up the bulk of the book. The suspects are all highly characterized in certain aspects but remain totally unknown in others, making them memorably but still mysterious. The political issues of the day (the book was written in 1937 and published in '38), primarily Nazi brutality and pre-war communism, are touched on several times obliquely and once directly. The mystery elements are reminiscent of Agatha Christie, the realism of John le Carre. The writing is concise and potent; it's a quick but rewarding read.

Although Ambler is known for his spy thrillers of the 1930s, he stands the genre on its head in this one-of-a-kind gem that is so enjoyable it's probably illegal. It's definitely his best book. A bumbling young British schoolmaster takes a vacation in a picturesque European inn located near some miltary fortifications. Unknowlingly he photographs said fortif. and the next thing he knows he is being grilled like a trout by the local gendarmes. Athough the start of the new term is looming, he is forced by the police to stay at the inn and "make inquiries" for them regarding the identity of a clever spy. If he attempts to sneak away, the teacher will be detained and arrested. Although quite put out at first, the teacher begins to enjoy spying on his fellow inn-mates and comes up with some inventive tricks of his own (to the despair of the chief of police). There is real danger and plenty of suspense but more than that, there is a delightful character who reveals his "inner spy" and takes the reader on a throughly enjoyable romp.

Long before le Carre's George Smiley and Len Deighton's Harry Palmer there were Eric Ambler's accidental spies. In the late 1930's the loosely defined adventure/spy genre was not much advanced from the earlier works of Erskine Childers (Riddle of the Sands) and John Buchan (Thirty Nine Steps). Ambler set out to write a book that added a small bit of realism to the good guy v. bad guy model. 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. Epitaph for a Spy is an excellent representative sample of Ambler's work. In a footnote written in 1951 Ambler states that he "wrote Epitaph for a Spy in 1937 and it was a mild attempt at realism". 1937 was certainly a good year for realism in Europe and Ambler does an excellent job setting a realistic mood for a continent on the brink of another major war. The story begins with an itinerant language teacher, Josef Vadassy, returning to Paris from his summer holidays. Vadassy stops off at a little town, St. Gatien, on his return journey. An amateur photographer, Vadassy drops off a roll of film at the local chemists for development. When he goes to pick up the photographs he finds himself under arrest by the French authorities. His film contains photos of a top secret French naval installation. Vadassy has no idea how the photos got there. One of the French agents, recognizing that he did not take the pictures advises Vadassy that he will be free to leave town if he goes back to the hotel and finds out which of the guests is the actual photo-taking spy. Vadassy, a stateless Hungarian traveling on a Yugoslav passport has no choice but to play along. The rest of the book is devoted to Vadassy's efforts to uncover the spy. In rather traditional fashion, Vadassy hotel is peopled by a diverse but limited group of`suspects'. There is the couple that runs the hotel, an American brother and sister, an English major and his Italian-born wife, a couple enjoying a romantic getaway with someone other than their spouses, a German businessman and a Swiss couple. Vadassy is not a particularly good spy. He has been thrust into a situation for which he is woefully unprepared. In fact he is rather inept. I thought of Vadassy as Hercule Poirot as played by Inspector Clousseau of Pink Panther fame. As the story progresses, Ambler does a very nice job of fleshing out the underlying personalities of his cast of characters. Not every is quite as it seems of course and Vadassy stumbles from one suspect to the next. By the time the book has reached its conclusion the reader has had an opportunity to assess each character enough to make a guess as to who the real spy is. It is to Ambler's credit that the spy is not readily apparent, at least not to this reader. Epitaph for a Spy was an excellent read and I look forward to reading more of Ambler's work. L. Fleisig

Josef Vadassy teaches languages in Paris. He takes a vacation on the French Riviera, and brings his Zeiss Contax camera to take photographs. When his roll is finished he brings it in for development. There is a problem when he comes to pick it up: it has pictures of a restricted naval base at Toulon. The police question him, and discover that another camera had been switched for his. Vadassy is stateless; he was born in a part of Hungary that was turned over to Jugoslavia. While a student at the University of Buda-Pesth his elder brother and father were shot by the Jugoslav police for their involvement in politics. The French police demand his cooperation, or he will be deported back to Jugoslavia. Vadassy must inquire among his fellow guests to find the person who also has a Zeiss Contax. The rest of the book tells of his experiences with the other 12 guests at the small hotel. Vadassy must report his findings to the police each day about the cameras and other events. Vadassy talks to these guests and learns more about them, at least what they tell him. Chapter 13 has the story of Herr Heinberger, more realistic that the story of "Victor Laszlo" of "Casablanca". The plan of the police works, and the real spy is traced to his employer. Vadassy will become a French citizen, and discovers some truths about the other guests. They were not what they seemed. This was Eric Ambler's first successful novel. Like his other novels, it shows the struggle of one person against the power of a state, and his survival. The 'Footnote' for the 1951 edition says the Sumerian rulers of Mesopotamia were using undercover operators thousands of years before Moses sent spies into Canaan. Yet spy stories were only published in the early twentieth century. Detective stories were first published in the mid-nineteenth century. I suspect that society was mostly rural or in small town, and did not have the big cities that need detectives, or the imperialism that needed spies.

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 Epitaph for a Spy. During the pre-World War II era, it was common for ordinary citizens to be pressed into espionage activities, whether knowingly or not. These were often wealthy yachtsmen, newspaper reporters and industrialists with connections. Mr. Ambler deliberately ma

Reading Epitaph for a Spy made me realize how much better popular/mass-oriented fiction was in the old days. Unlike most of the bestselling writers today, who merely put out glorified screenplays, Ambler (like Ian Fleming) uses style as well as plot to entertain. Epitaph for a Spy is an excellent book, with the southern French setting and characters very vividly described, though it's more of a mystery/detective story than spy fiction in the usual sense.