Having authored A Coffin for Dimitrios, and The Light of Day, Eric Ambler is known as one of the father’s of the thriller. Since I have read A Coffin for Dimitrios, and seen Topkapi, the film version of The Light and Day, I decided to read one of Ambler’s less well-known books, Epitaph for a Spy.Epitaph for a Spy is an excellent thriller, set on a small stage but similar in atmosphere to Alan Furst’s wonderful novels of Europe in the 1930s, which I also recommend. The story takes place on the eve of war. One reason these books are interesting is because of the suspense created by the reader’s knowledge that World War II will soon come, while the naïve characters in the book maintain a degree of innocence. Some characters remain happy-go-lucky, while others feel the doom nearing. Still others are foreign spies.Our narrator, Joseph Vadassy, has the credentials to be the thriller’s hero. A Hungarian native holding an invalid Yugoslav passport, he is a man without a country. He is an alien, who speaks five languages, and earns a modest living as a teacher of foreign languages in Paris. Will he prove to be an innocent man or a spy?An interesting background issue, the difference between nations and states arises. Whereas Americans typically think of the nation and the state as being the same thing, there is actually a distinction. The nation is the people of a country—what we think of as nationality—and the state refers to a government with sovereignty to the borders. Not uncommon in South Eastern Europe, then as now, the borders of the states are not congruent with the borders of the nations. Vadassy is born in Szabadka, Hungary, a town that later becomes Subotica, Yugoslavia. Vadassy’s passport has expired, and he fears returning to Yugoslavia where his father and brother have been killed. Terrible social conditions in Hungary make that an unlikely place to return and he desires French citizenship.Now located in Serbia, Subotica and its region, Vojvodina, are still comprised of Hungarians, Serbians, Croatians and other smaller populations. Locations like this, with a mix of peoples and changing borders, prove to be ideal for thrillers. Graham Greene placed Stamboul Train, one of his “entertainments,” as he called his thrillers, in Subotica.Alfred Hitchcock once famously claimed that his films often revolved around a MacGuffin, the thing that gets the story rolling, but that ultimately proves unnecessary to the story, like the eponymous Maltese Falcon. The MacGuffin here is a 36 exposure roll of film. While the last twenty six frames are various poses of a lizard, the first ten are photographs of secret French military sites. Vadassy claims to have photographed the lizard, but swears he did not take the first ten photographs.The local French Commissaire de Police and Beghin, a sweaty fat man (think, Sydney Greenstreet ) from the Sûreté Générale, feel they have an airtight case. Vadassy will be imprisoned for espionage, or thrown out of the country, unless…, unless, he can establish the true photographer of the French military sites. To this end, Vadassy is permitted to return to La Reserve, a small hotel on the French Riviera where the bulk of story unfolds. Beghin advises him to simply interview the other guests – do you own a camera like mine?—seemingly foolish advice which Vadassy rejects in favor of more complex approaches more likely to get him in trouble. Who could be the photographer of the first ten frames? How could the spy have possibly shot the first ten frames on Vadassy’s roll of film? And what ill might befall Vadassy, should the treasonous culprit turn up in search of the first ten photos?The story proceeds with a number of twists which I won’t give away, as Vaddassy mingles with the other guests, a varied cast of characters stereotyped by nationality—the American wise guy, and the French lover—suspecting and rejecting them in turn.The story proved to be sufficiently visual that it was turned into a 1944 movie, Hotel Reserve, starring James Mason –transformed from a Hungarian linguist into an Austrian medical student. In all, the book was a wonderful entertainment and left me with the desire to dig deeper into Ambler corpus.
I picked this up because Alan Furst, whose spy novels I have been enjoying (I have three reviews posted) stated that he was a great admirer of Ambler.I can see why. Ambler, like Furst, does not write conventional spy thrillers. (Of course, this book was written in the 1930's, so that's part of it.) Epitaph for a Spy follows a very unlikely "spy," Joseph Vadassey, who is a country-less ex-Hungarian conscripted by a devious French commisariat into helping locate a spy at a hotel on the French coast. If Joseph does not help, he is threatened with deportation to Hungary (not a good thing in the 1930s). The novel is also a mystery novel, which apparently makes it unique among Ambler novels. It is a "whodunnit," except that instead of a murder, the question is who is taking pictures of secret French fortifications(?), who switched his camera with Joseph's camera accidentally(?), who searched Joseph's room(?), who knocked Joseph out and searched his pockets(?). It is Agath Christie-esque in its use of the device of having all of the "suspects" be at one one hotel. They are not prevented from leaving by physical barriers (a la Orient Express), but they are restrained from leaving by virtue of their psychology and their desires.Anyway, I enjoyed this. It is not a great book, but it is a very enjoyable short little read. I do not think it is as good as Alan Furst's books, the writer who led me to Ambler. Strangely, Furst provides more atmospheric detail than the guy who actually WAS writing in France, about France, in the 1930's!
What do You think about Epitaph For A Spy (2002)?
This is the second Eric Ambler book I have read after A Coffin for Dimitrios. Although not as classic as Dimitrios, it still is a pretty entertaining spy story. The plot follows an ordinary Hungarian man on vacation at a beach resort in the south of France. From the opening sentence the reader is instantly drawn into the story as the protagonist announcing that he was placed under arrest by the French police. The police confiscate his camera film and discover that there are 10 photographs containing images of restricted French military sites among the rest of his vacation photos of lizards. Why are these photos on his roll of film? Who took those pictures? How did they get access to his camera? Why? The French authorities have given him a week to answer these questions or else he will be deported. The protagonist is met with a race against time to answer these questions in this fast paced and exciting thriller.
—Sean
I’d never read Eric Ambler before, but his name kept coming up as a must-read for anyone interested in the spy genre, so I took a chance with this. In this case, the main character, Josef Vadassy, isn’t a spy, but a Yugoslavian refugee and language teacher on vacation who is suspected of being a spy after a roll of film he drops off at the chemist is discovered to have pics of secret French naval installations. Threatened with deportation if he doesn’t cooperate, Vadassy must root out the real spy, who is staying at the small Riviera resort where he’s on holiday. It’s equal parts suspenseful and frustrating, the former due to excellent pacing and the latter due to Vadassy’s complete ineptness as a detective. On the other hand, most people in his situation – who also didn’t have the benefit of decades of espionage pop culture to rely on – wouldn’t do much better, which at least makes it realistic. And indeed, Ambler’s aim was to make espionage stories more realistic and human, as opposed to the patriotic he-man bluster of writers like John Buchan. Anyway, it’s pretty good, and I’ll be trying Ambler again.
—John Defrog
It was the first Eric Ambler book I have read. I like historical and spy stories and this was both. The main character, Vadassy, gets mixed up in the hunt for a spy while staying at a resort in southern France just prior to World War II. The character is unique in that he is a man without a country, a teacher of foreign languages, who happens to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and finds himself accused of espionage because of he is a foreigner. Ambler's prose can be dry at times but he keeps the story moving. I felt he somewhat rushed the ending. Vadassy never figures out what is going around him by myself and this was mildly irritating. It alright to be an innocent embroiled in a mystery but at some point he should get a clue of what's going on.Despite the weak spots, I still enjoyed the book. It gives a glimmer of Europe pre-World War II and the politics that were emerging. It also shows parallels with today's treatment of people we don't trust because we don't understand their backgrounds. I will read more eric Ambler.
—Bob
