In the Beginning: "A Coffin for Dimitrios" by Eric Ambler

Before British author Eric Ambler came along, thrillers and spy yarns were mostly romantic affairs, populated by flag-waving heroes and brimming with manly idealism, jut-jawed jingoism, and, sometimes, a disturbing racism.

There were exceptions: Both Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent, 1904) and Somerset Maugham (the “Ashenden” stories,1928), laid some groundwork for a greater “realism.” But all that had to wait until Eric Ambler’s second novel, Background to Danger(1937).

A Coffin for Dimitrios (1938) was the fifth novel Ambler wrote in his pre-WWII period. It stands tall among his classics, and firmly alongside other novels of its era. It tells the story of Charles Latimer, a minor scholar and old-school English mystery novelist (author of such cosies as The Bloody Shovel and “I” Said the Eye). While vacationing in Istanbul in the late 1930s, he meets a fan, the sinister and charming Colonel Haki, who may or may not work for the Turkish secret police.

Colonel Haki is thrilled to meet of one of his favorite mystery authors but adds that “I find the murderer in a roman policier much more sympathetic than a real murderer.” For reasons left unsaid, he shares with Latimer a dossier detailing the violent career of Dimitrios Makropoulos, a profoundly unsympathetic thief, murderer, assassin and drug-dealer. There’s also an important detail missing from the dossier: Dimitrios is dead, his corpse recently found floating in the Bosphorous straits. Who put him there, and why, is the mystery at the novel’s core.

Perhaps a little ashamed of his sheltered life, Latimer leaves his cosy world behind to launch an obsessive and dangerous plunge into the mystery of Dimitrios. The trail leads him through a shadow-riven Balkan landscape still haunted by World War I and seething with criminal intrigue as it gears up for the next one. As he wanders dank alleyways and cobbled streets, he encounters a parade of gamy characters and cruel deceptions, all of it glued together by that simplest and most reliable of motives, greed. 

Ambler was a leftist radical during this period and salts his novel with numerous insights into the links between capitalism and crime. Along the way, Latimer winds up an early pioneer of the investigative practice of “following the money.” 

“The most important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination,” Ambler writes in one of his most famous quotes, “is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.”

While the novel risks becoming a finger-wagging lecture, Ambler’s eye for detail, character and pacing keep the narrative rolling. He knew when to shut up and let matters speak for themselves. The money trail, convincingly laid out, leads to a conclusion that may not be too surprising to jaded modern readers but remains convincing and thrilling, while taking a witty final turn.

Another unique feature is the hero, Charles Latimer. Latimer is no Richard Hannay or proto James Bond, but a fumbling naïve academic who barely knows which way to point a pistol. It was Ambler’s unique insight that the ordinary man, the chap who winds up way in over his head, raises the stakes and builds a better foundation for suspense. To paraphrase Ambler fan Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Latimer is a man to whom things are done as opposed to a man who does things to others. We worry what will happen to him and that makes for greater suspense than a thousand unkillable, unstoppable, immortal super heroes. Every man—and not a few women—like to think of themselves as Mr. Bond . . . but in reality we’re all closer, much closer, to being Charles Latimer.

Ambler’s steely gaze permeates the modern thriller. Alan Furst claims him as a direct inspiration for his pre-WW2 novels of intrigue (though Furst is much more the romantic), while his realistic approach to character can be found in Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, Transcription. His name may not be spoken as it once was, but every thriller writer alive owes a deep debt to Eric Ambler.

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Thomas Burchfield is the author of Butchertown,a ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up  that author David Corbett (The Art of Character) called “incendiary!” His contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Arkwon the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book Festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays Whackers, The Uglies, Now Speaks the Devil and Dracula: Endless Night(e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing, all are available at Amazon,Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, and other retailers. His reviews have appeared in Bright Lights Film Journaland The Strand. He also published a two-part look at the life and career of the great movie villain (and spaghetti western star) Lee Van Cleef in Filmfax. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.