Pan has launched a series of reprints of crucial crime novels,
and this is one of three Ambler novels included in the bunch.
The books come complete with new introductions by modern authors,
in this case by Robert Harris, though it is apparent that Harris
has written one essay to be used for all three Ambler novels.
This is a service, since Ambler had gone out of print, and
should not have been allowed to do so. Harris identifies the
important influence Ambler had on much work that followed. His
novels may be read as period pieces, as Harris suggests, but they
also feature a particularly modern kind of anti-hero, one who
influenced figures as diverse as Hitchcock and John Franklin Bardin.
Epitaph for a Spy is a particularly revealing book in that sense. Although it features a typically unappealing Ambler anti-hero,
it is more parlour mystery than existential thriller. Who is
the spy who used the wrong camera? Colonel Mustard in the conservatory
with the billiard cue perhaps? The lines of social strata had
yet to be destroyed by the oncoming war, and thus their transgressions
in ways more subtle than we are used to today reverberated far
more deeply to Ambler's contemporary audience.
Strangely, for one who is looked at as a stylistic innovator,
Ambler's novels read far better as proto-screenplays: plot in
the service of character. It is useful indeed to see them back
in print.
