Word: ambler
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...Ambler's old practice of humanizing his heroes by having them blunder into dangerous situations had become a tendency to portray his protaganists as, well, creeps. Like Arthur Abdul Simpson, the hero of Dirty Story, who is first introduced in The Light of Day. There he is blackmailed by a jewel ring into smuggling guns, and in turn blackmailed by the Turkish police into infiltrating the mob (a decent film, Topkapi, was made from this; Peter Ustinov made an excellent creep). Anyway, Simpson is the son of a British army man stationed in Cairo and an Egyptian woman. They...
Simpson is weak and paranoid because he has a right to be, Ambler seems to be saying--you need animal cunning to get through these days, and this is Simpson's only virtue. There is no need for the facile theme of having Simpson discover his "manhood" through his experiences--only Simpson feeling immensely pleased with himself at the end of Dirty Story for hitting an armed man from behind with a blunt instrument...
...Levantine mongrel," and he spend this time working out deals with a corrupt government to make profits for his company. All this until he falls in with a band of Palestine guerillas. This band may have been fighting for the liberation of their people at one time, but in Ambler's world they are now no more than thugs parading under false pretences. And the Israeli secret service is almost...
...with a drinking problem and so much alienation that he edits a right-winganti-communist newsletter run by a crazed American general: he falls into a plot by two bored intelligence officers in western Europe to disrupt NATO. The CIA, the KGB and other intelligence services get involved, and Ambler's knowledge of how these organizations operate--the old-boy networks; using journalists as front men--is so extensive that recent revelations about...
...Ambler shares some of his hero's flaws, and he is cynical enough to know it. Obviously he is much too cynical. There are some elements of imperial Britain in his attitude--Arabs tend to smell, for example, and Americans are vulgar and prone to cowboy delusions. There is a mystifying section in The Schirmer Inheritance where a woman whose family has been killed by the Gestapo--a rabid German-hater--falls passionately in love with a dominant and brutal ex-Nazi, as though this is the other side of the coin. But in general Ambler has a wide...