Word: ambler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...higher road, paved by Eric Ambler and Graham Greene and improved by Le Carré, leads to an ambiguous plane where neither side has a moral exclusive. The flares of hot and cold wars illuminate enemies with human faces. The agent's mind is as balkanized as the lands he travels; betrayal becomes a way of life. The message no longer echoes national anthems but T.S. Eliot's Gerontion: "Think/ Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices/ Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues/ Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes...
...Carré's astringent, melancholy tones will be familiar to anyone who has read his works or those of such eminences as Eric Ambler (The Mask of Dimitrios) and Graham Greene (The Third Man). Still, Ambler's works are written from the outside with sardonic imagination. Greene's achieve more intimacy, but he is careful to label them as mere "entertainments," like a student caught doodling when he should be cramming for exams. Le Carré carries no such liabilities or self-deprecations. His books are written from the inside out. "There is a kind of fatigue which only fieldmen know" observes...
Fiscal Crimes. Ambler sets these two adversaries down in a Mediterranean villa and proceeds to complicate an already tangled web. Firman's task is to feed Krom a diet of "truth, rubbish and half-truth" that will leave his interrogator totally befuddled and, most important, hide the identity of Firman's boss: Mat Williamson, a Fiji-born financial wizard who can be terminally mean when his interests are threatened. While Firman tries to bamboozle the professor and his two academic assistants, Williamson decides to hasten things by killing everyone involved...
...allowing Firman to tell his own story, Ambler produces the same moral blur that characterized his earlier spy novels. Because Firman is indeed under siege, from several directions, it is hard not to root for him. An avowed liar who frequently protests his own innocence, Firman also deserves all the trouble he gets. If nothing else, he is guilty of rampant pettifogging...
...even Ambler's skills can make fiscal crimes committed via telex or computer as gripping as older forms of skulduggery. Still, The Siege of the Villa Lipp has more than enough cerebral twists and sophisticated wit to offset its comparative bloodlessness. And Ambler includes sufficient shocks to show that he has not forgotten how to put his horrors before his cartel...