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Reading what for me is the latest installment
from Eric Ambler (originally published in 1938), I can’t help thinking of a
Hitchcock movie. Not any particular one—perhaps The Many Who Knew Too Much
with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day or North by Northwest with Cary Grant would be
exemplars—where ordinary persons become entangled with espionage. In this case,
a person loosed from the protections of citizenship by the shifting sands of
European nationhood suffers a problem, a big problem, when someone accidentally
mistakenly takes his camera. The police become involved, and Mr. Vadassy must
try to sort things out. However, he’s not a spy or an especially clever fellow,
at least in this type of affair. He’s an ESL teacher. He must try to figure out
who took his camera and the photos that led the French counter-espionage
authorities to him. He must identify the culprit, in much like an Agatha
Christie novel, from a small group of guests at a quaint resort hotel on the
French Riviera. Vadassy is no Bourne, no Bond, not even a Smiley. He’s just a
guy forced into a devilishly difficult task.
Although this novel didn’t prove my favorite
Ambler, it still has the atmosphere of pre-war Europe, the innocent plunged
into fearful terrain, and the clean, clear writing and plotting that make Ambler
a pro. The little society of the resort and the machinations of the authorities
that try to make Vadassy their agent, prove more complex and baffling than a
mere mortal can hope to manage. Thus builds the tension to the end, and in the
end . . . well, you’ll have to read it to learn about that.
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