crime time
Home Latest News Reviews Features Interviews Profiles Web News, Features & Reviews Magazine Links Contact Us
  
Follow Crime Time on Twitter
  



Death
In A Cold Climate
A Guide to Scandinavian
Crime Fiction

by Barry Forshaw

Published Jan 2012
Available
from Amazon

Crime Time is edited
by Barry Forshaw


More Book Reviews

Now, It's... Noir Theatre!
order from amazon.co.uk

Edge Of Dark Water Joe Lansdale
pre-order from Amazon

Good Bait by John Harvey
Review in The Independent

Raylan By Elmore Leonard
Pre order RAYLAN

Misery Bay Steve Hamilton
Buy this book from amazon

Happy Days By Graham Hurley
Pre-order the book from amazon

WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWS

feature: Thrillers Including Simon Khoury And Simon Kernick
www.amazon.co.uk

Jeremy Jehu gets all het up about the latest batch of thrillers

news: A Night Of Crime In Belgravia
www.amazon.co.uk

On Wednesday February 8th, come and hear three of the UK's finest crime writers discussing their work at Belgravia Books in the heart of London.

review: Bereft By Chris Womersley
www.amazon.co.uk

Just once in a while, a thriller comes along that is so good it takes your breath away

news: John Hawkes Takes The Lead In Jackie Brown Prequel The Switch
www.amazon.co.uk

Now, before anybody gets too excited it needs to be stated right up front that, no, Quentin Tarantino has no hand in this

feature: Mark Billingham And Paul Johnston In Conversation
www.amazon.co.uk

So what nudged you towards the genre?

news: Century Buys Chatterton Crime Debut
www.amazon.co.uk

Century has acquired two novels in a new procedural crime series by author Ed Chatterton, billing it as "gritty, dark, visceral and utterly gripping".

Epitaph For A Spy
Michael Carlson

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 theimportant 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.

Posted at 12:00AM Monday 01 Jan 2007

Search the News Archive