Eric Ambler

Born in London in 1909, Ambler had by the age of thirty produced a group of novels that would forever change the fundamental nature of the suspense thriller. In such works as Dark Frontier (1936), Background to Danger (1937), Epitaph for a Spy (1938), and A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939), Ambler eschewed the cloak-and-dagger formula of what he called "the old secret service thrillers" for a new kind of spy story that concerned itself with the psychological, social, philosophical, and political issues of the modern age. He sought to "intellectualize' the older, anemic spy story," Ambrosetti…