Eric Ambler's Epitaph for a Spy (1938) and The Mask of Dimitrios (1939)

             Josef Vadassy comes under suspicion of being a spy when photographs of Toulon defense fortifications are found on his photographic film. He is forced to be the unwilling and resistant tool of Surèté detective Beghin, who is looking for the real spy who exchanged cameras with Vadassy. Because he is a stateless person with an expired passport, Vadassy, an instructor at a Paris language school who vacations on the French Mediterranean coast, must comply with the authorities or risk being deported.

          Vadassy, who is a good deal less smart than he imagines himself, blunders through several days at the Rèserve Hotel in St. Gatien, his usual vacation spot, vainly trying to discover who the spy is. Then the novel turns from short-suspect-list mystery to adventure tale as Vadassy accompanies the police in their pursuit of the spy.

          Ambler wrote Epitaph for a Spy in 1937, and it captures the shadow Germany is casting over Europe as wars grows more inevitable. The grip of Germany on its own people trying to escape to other countries is shown in the story of the German whom Vadassy first suspects of being the spy and later befriends. And Ambler succeeds in depicting the ever-present terror of the stateless person in such a world at such a time. But the novel lacks the page-turning appeal of Ambler’s next book, and his best, The Mask of Dimitrios (1939). The American title was A Coffin for Dimitrios.

          In Istanbul, Charles Latimer sees the body of a man the police tell him is that of the notorious criminal Dimitrios Makropoulos. His quick view of the body makes Latimer of value to one of Dimitrios’s former gang members, and it also puts him in danger. He follows the history of Dimitrios through various cities on the Aegean and in the Balkans. Finally, it takes him to Paris. His interest, he tells himself, is professional: knowing about a criminal such as Dimitrios will help him in writing his mystery novels—or perhaps he will write a biography of Dimitrios.

          Latimer is naïve, and much dimmer than the people he encounters. Among them is Frederik Petersen, and Ambler’s portrait of him is that of a complete moral imbecile. For Petersen, the main problems with white slavery are its expense and trouble, while the bad actor in drug trafficking is the addict. Dimitrios, on the other hand, who from his youth has known that he wanted only money and power—for Demetrios no moral categories apply, any more than they would for a shark, a creature designed to do one thing, to feed.

          Only the fact that Ambler has dropped hints (“When Latimer looked back at this time later….”) can reassure us that his main character will not come to a sticky end. Latimer survives in a dramatic ending. Ambler is an elegant stylist who reminds me at times of Graham Greene, but though his element is similar here to some of Greene’s books, Ambler strikes a more optimistic note. The Mask of Dimitrios makes most of the lists of 100 best mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels.