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Epitaph for a Spy
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Classics > Where are you with your Eric Ambler reading?

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message 1: by Feliks, Moderator (new)

Feliks (dzerzhinsky) | 1257 comments Mod
I'd reckon myself to only have read half of his top-line big release titles. Woeful!

In some cases, I had seen the movie adaptation and felt satisfied enough.

In other cases I just wasn't in the right mood; I threw the book down and didn't resume. But this doesn't mean that there was anything wrong with the work.

Then yes, frankly I confess there were some I simply lost interest in as I was consuming it, appetite waned.

I suppose I could sum up by saying that I felt sated by my favorite Ambler titles. Didn't feel I needed to complete his entire oevre. Especially his later works which creep up into the 1970s; or Latin America ...he is at his best writing about WWII and Europe.

You? Your sins?


message 2: by DS (new)

DS Kane (dskane) | 8 comments The first espionage novels I read, in high school, were Eric Ambler's. When I tried rereading one this year, I failed to complete the first chapter. Current realities have caused me to become too jaded for preachy spy novels.


message 3: by Feliks, Moderator (new)

Feliks (dzerzhinsky) | 1257 comments Mod
Hmmm. Could very well be present though i don't recall it myself. Any writer from that time might fairly be accused of moral earnestness, I suppose. When I think of Ambler I think of a certain brisk, lightweight quality, But the main thing is his emphasis on 'the everyman'.


message 4: by Richard (new)

Richard Dunne | 5 comments Good evening. I first read The Intercom Conspiracy while in high school; Ambler's books were based on mystery and intrigue and not super fast action, violence. I found a few of his early books at used book sales - The Light of Day, Judgment on Deltchev; I always thought they were high quality mystery stories with literary value.


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