One of the Best Thriller Writers - Someone we shouldn't forget

 I have started re-reading Eric Ambler's A Passage of Arms. I must have read this at least a dozen times and I am still enjoying it as much as I did the first time. Eric Ambler was a master story teller. His thrillers were always about much more than the standard thriller plot. A Passage of Arms is set in Malaysia - Malay in those days and under British rule. It starts off by telling us about an Indian servant on a rubber plantation whose burning ambition is to start bus transport between a few important towns in the area. When the British wipe out a group of Communist rebels nearby, he realizes that there must be an arms dump somewhere and starts to wonder if he could use it in some way to bring about his dream. How do you go about selling arms? Into this mix is thrown a somewhat naive American married couple, tourists wanting to experience the area. They are unwittingly drawn into the "passage of arms". When the word page-turner is used for this book, for once it is not an exaggeration.

What makes Ambler stand out, in my opinion, is that his main characters are not heroes. They are ordinary people or people with problems of their own who are swept up in events which they cannot control. The first Ambler novel which I read was Journey into Fear written in the 1940's as far as I remember. Again, it tells the story of an engineer in a munitions factory whose knowledge is key in the production of a deadly weapon. When the ship he is on sets sail, he discovers that his life is in danger. Who can he trust among the passengers?

Ambler's main characters meet people who are decidedly louche, who all have their own agenda. Who should he trust?

In The Nightcomers or State of Siege as it is called in the USA, an engineer on his way home from an assignment gets mixed up in a revolution. Another nail-biter which I have just finished reading.

Any writer would do well to study his characters and how he portrays them. And to see how he develops the story, increasing tension in every chapter. His novels are short, probably not much more than 200 pages and they do not have any extra padding. He does fill the reader in on history relevant to the story or to help us understand a character better or to make them more mysterious. 

I can safely say that I have yet to find a writer who entertains me as much as Mr Ambler. I know his novels are a bit of out of date, having been written in the 1940's and 1950's but the reader still can identify with the main character and root for him through the story. I think it is a shame that he is not more widely read nowadays.

 

Favourite Childhood Reads

My brother and I were reminiscing about our childhood books and films the other day. We loved the Bobbsey Twins and we even built a dam on a little stream near the house after reading one of their adventures. And there was Pocomoto, of course, and the boys from the T-Bar-T (I think that was the name) who I envied because they had their own horses to ride. I remember crying over Lassie Come Home and The Call of the Wild.

When I started secondary school, I read some of the Chalet School books, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables and other lesser known novels such as Jill's Gymkhana and Fiander's Horses. Fiander's Horses gave me a lot of insight into the racing world and working in a racing stables. I love horses (I love all animals) and if I ever got rich (which I never will) I would love to own a racehorse.

I remember that the owner of the local news agent once told me that I "liked boys' books" because I bought Westerns, which I think she thought odd. I read The Oxbow Incident without perhaps really understanding all the nuances of this story. Zane Grey has always been a favourite, in particular Under the Tonto Rim, a book which reminded me and still reminds me of my childhood. Many years ago, when I lived in Germany, I wanted to read this novel again but it was only available in German which would not have the same effect, I felt. I wrote to the Zane Grey people in the U.S. (pre-internet!!) and asked if I could purchase a copy direct from them. They very kindly sent me a free copy - unfortunately I have lost the very gracious letter that accompanied it - and I still have it as one of my prized possessions.

I hear a lot about people discovering reading during covid-19 quarantine. That has to be one of the good things to emerge from this crisis. My mother used to say that even if you only read a "penny dreadful" as those cheap magazines were called, you still learned something. There is nothing quite like settling down with a book written by a favourite author.
What am I reading right now? One False Move, a Harlan Coben thriller published in 1998 which I picked up in a local store.