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A Coffin for Dimitrios

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but who paid for the bullet."

Compact, amusingly cynical little sentences such as the above bubble up throughout Eric Ambler's "A Coffin for Dimitrios" and, in fact, throughout most of Ambler's books. That is just one reason why Ambler's books are so enjoyable and have held up so well over time.

For those not familiar with his work, Ambler was to the modern British spy novel what Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were to the American detective novel. Ambler transformed the spy novel from a simplistic black and white world of perfect good guys versus nefarious bad guys into a far more realistic world where sometimes the difference between good and evil is not all that great.

Typically, Ambler would take an unassuming, unsuspecting spectator and immerse him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre-World War II Europe. The result was a series of highly entertaining and satisfying books that many believe set the stage for the likes of le Carre, Deighton, and, most recently, Alan Furst. A Coffin for Dimitrios was one of Ambler's best known works. (It was made into a movie starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.) It is a very entertaining read.

The plot is relatively easy to follow. Charles Lattimer is a British University professor who retired from academia once he discovered that writing mass market detective stories was far more lucrative. While on holiday in Istanbul he makes the acquaintance of a Turkish police inspector who is an admirer of Lattimer's work. Lattimer is invited to the policeman's office where he is provided with ideas for a book the police officer is writing. While there he is invited to join the officer in viewing the body of a master criminal, Dimitrios, who has just been fished out of the Bosporus. Lattimer, fascinated by sketchy but lurid details of Dimitrios criminal career, decides to trace Dimitrios steps in the hopes that he will obtain new material for future detective stories. Lattimer travels from Turkey to Greece, Bulgaria, Switzerland and France in search of background information. Of course, anyone seeking such information in the corridors of the criminal underworld immediately becomes the object of attention, some of it quite dangerous. The story of Dimitrios' life is peeled away like an onion. Bits of information are revealed at each stop. Lattimer discovers that Dimitrios' actions sometimes had a sinister political connection. As the novel reaches its climax the final bits of information needed to complete the puzzle that is Dimitrios are revealed.

A Coffin For Dimitrios made for an excellent read. Some readers may find it a bit quaint. Some may find Ambler's prose a bit old-fashioned. But when one considers that Ambler's books were written close to 70 years ago I don't think it particularly fair to harp overly much on a writing or prose-style that doesn't quite match that of a le Carre or Deighton. A Coffin for Dimitrios and most of the rest of Ambler's works have been re-issued in new paperback editions by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Press. They are in print and readily available. I don't hesitate to recommend A Coffin for Dimitrios or any of Ambler's works. They are perfect for leisure reading whether at the beach or elsewhere. Last, if you have enjoyed the works of John le Carre, Deighton, Ian Fleming, or Alan Furst, it is worth a trip to Ambler to see one of their literary ancestors in action.

Ordinarily, I don't read thrillers, but since this was one of my mother's favorite books, I thought I would give it a try. What a surprise!

Instead of some overblown macho stud like James Bond, the protagonist is Charles Latimer, a quiet English academic, who becomes intrigued by the death of an arch-felon, Dimitrios Makropoulos. He decides to find out more about this Dimitrios, and winds up traversing Europe from Istanbul to Paris.

There are no gimmicks in Ambler's writing; he presents a mystery and unravels it. Supposedly, Ambler is responsible for the "modern" spy thriller. If so, he did it well, but the genre devolved after him. A Coffin for Dimitrios is a superb book whether it is classified a mystery, thriller, or whatever.

It's amazing how quickly the books of second-rate writers become dated. I'm partial to thrillers, and my bookshelf groans with stories, set in the Cold War, that I will never read again. Their settings are as strange to me now as the Roman Empire or renaissance Europe. Their time is past. No so Ambler. 'Dimitrios' is based on people, not place. He created so many memorable characters: the Turkish secret policeman, clownish off-duty, ruthless and cold-eyed at his work; the Bulgarian good-time girl, whose head and heart told her different things; the hen-pecked offical in Belgrade, with his greedy wife; the respectable cafe-owner who slides, without resistance, into the lucrative world of prostitution and drug-smuggling; the successful Swiss businessman whose business just happened to be selling secrets. These are not people I have come across in real life, but they all strike me as flesh-and-blood characters. I could imagine having a fascinating conversation with any of them. In terms of place, the end of the Cold War has actually helped Ambler. We (I'm British) seem to have returned to the Europe of the inter-war years: corrupt, amoral, nervy, and prone to occasional outbursts of horrific violence. The significant difference, of course, is that we have no Hitler around now. In 'Dimitrios', Hitler is never mentioned by name, but he is always there, hovering, as it were, just out of the corner of your eye. Ambler's prose is wonderful. He tells a complicated story so well, lingering just long enough to sketch in profiles of people and places, before getting on with the plot. Three passages linger in my memory: the massacre of the inhabitants of Smyrna; the entrapment of the Yugoslav offical; and Peters' description of how intelligent and worldly-wise people become addicted to heroin. Ambler's prose is spare and cynical, yet there is a dash of pity as well. Unlike so many novelists today who give the impression that their characters are no more than specimens on the lab bench, you feel that Ambler saw his characters as people. For a novel whose subject-matter is so dark, the reader finishes it feeling satisfied and enriched. An enjoyable and profitable read.

To read or not to read the great spy novels of Eric Ambler? That is the question most people ignore because they are not familiar with Mr. Ambler and his particularly talent.

Mr. Ambler has always had this problem. As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his introduction to Intrigue (an omnibus volume containing Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, Cause for Alarm and Background to Danger), "Perhaps this was the volume that brought Mr. Ambler to the attention of the public that make best-sellers. They had been singularly inattentive until its appearance -- I suppose only God knows why." He goes on to say, "They had not even heeded the critics, who had said, from the very first, that Mr. Ambler had given new life and fresh viewpoint to the art of the spy novel -- an art supposedly threadbare and certainly cliché-infested."

So what's new and different about Eric Ambler writing? His heroes are ordinary people with whom almost any reader can identify, which puts you in the middle of a turmoil of emotions. His bad guys are characteristic of those who did the type of dirty deeds described in the book. His angels on the sidelines are equally realistic to the historical context. The backgrounds, histories and plot lines are finely nuanced into the actual evolution of the areas and events described during that time. In a way, these books are like historical fiction, except they describe deceit and betrayal rather than love and affection. From a distance of over 60 years, we read these books today as a way to step back into the darkest days of the past and relive them vividly. You can almost see and feel a dark hand raised to strike you in the back as you read one of his book's later pages. In a way, these stories are like a more realistic version of what Dashiell Hammett wrote as applied to European espionage.

Since Mr. Ambler wrote, the thrillers have gotten much bigger in scope . . . and moved beyond reality. Usually, the future of the human race is at stake. The heroes make Superman look like a wimp in terms of their prowess and knowledge. There's usually a love interest who exceeds your vision of the ideal woman. Fast-paced violence and killing dominate most pages. There are lots of toys to describe and use in imaginative ways. The villains combine the worst faults of the 45 most undesirable people in world history and have gained enormous wealth and power while being totally crazy. The plot twists and turns like cruise missile every few seconds in unexpected directions. If you want a book like that, please do not read Mr. Ambler's work. You won't like it.

If you want to taste, touch, smell, see and hear evil from close range and move through fear to defeat it, Mr. Ambler's your man.

On to A Coffin for Dimitrios. During the pre-World War II era, it was common for ordinary citizens to be pressed into espionage activities, whether knowingly or not. Many people rate A Coffin for Dimitrios to be the greatest novel built around that theme. Almost everyone agrees that it is Mr. Ambler's best novel.

Charles Latimer began his career as a lecturer in political economy at a minor English University and wrote three scholar volumes. Suffering from depression from his studies of the Nazis in the third volume, He wrote a successful detective story and was soon launched on a career as a writer that took him away from academia. A chance trip to Turkey after an illness in Athens causes him to meet a real policeman, Colonel Haki, who is a fan of his stories. They meet for lunch to discuss the colonel's literary ambitions. Casually, the colonel shares the dossier of a criminal, Dimitrios Markropoulos, to make the point that "the murderer in a roman policier [is] much more sympathetic than a real murderer." The dossier is filled with probable crimes with lots of gaps in time and knowledge between locations and crimes. Latimer learns that Dimitrios is now lying dead in the morgue, and develops an odd compulsion to see him. The colonel complies and Latimer decides he wants to know all about the dead man. The bulk of the story relates to finding the man behind the dossier through talking with his former associates. As the detection follows, new mysteries appear and Latimer finds himself in the middle of something much larger than himself.

For those who like complicated plots, this book is a delight. Each stage of the search for Dimitrios is like a separate short story that asks and answers a piece of the mystery. Some will undoubtedly see the links from one of these short stories to the next as sometimes being on the flimsy side. That's intended, rather than being a flaw. The larger theme of this book is about the weird appearance of the hand of Providence in our lives. But it's Providence viewed with a sense of humor. As the book begins, Mr. Ambler notes that "if there should be such as thing as a superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human efficiency. The choice of Latimer as its instrument could have been made only by an idiot."

After you finish enjoying the delightful story, please consider where else you are comfortable reading books set in the past for their observations about that past that are universal and timeless. For instance, does King Lear, or Hamlet speak to you today even though their settings are long since gone?

Ambler's book traces the story of Charles Latimer's, a British professor who writes detective novels in his spare time, descent into the world of international espionage and greed. Ambler is wonderful at recreating the recollections of an earnest and somewhat simple man who is hopelessly out his league as his follows the life history of a corpse he's been shown for laughs in a Turkish morgue.

This is the real deal in terms of mystery/spy novels. It's a delightfully intelligent and engaging page turner by the author who invented the modern spy genre. The roiling, ethnically and politically complex Europe of the 1930 is nearly another character of the novel, but unlike the work of more contemporary authors, the reader never feels bludgeoned over the head with historical trivia.

This is a fun, interesting, page-turning thriller. Great beach reading, but intelligent enough not to insult the serious reader of literature.

"Inevitably, chance does occasionally operate with a sort of fumbling coherence readily mistakable for the workings of a self-conscious Providence." And so begins the story of Dimitrios Makropoulos.

Eric Ambler's fascinating novel, A Coffin for Dimitrios (also titled The Mask of Dimitrios), was published in 1939 as Europe edged toward war. Charles Latimer, a lecturer in political economy, had unexpectedly become a successful writer of mystery stories. By chance, an improbable fan, a Colonel Haki in Istanbul, offers Latimer the opportunity to see a corpse recovered from the Bosphorus the night before. Dimitrios was "scum" that had been associated with murder, political assassination, and heroin smuggling. The dossier on Dimitrios was fragmentary and dated back to 1922. His death was an untidy conclusion to an untidy life.

For reasons even unclear to himself, Latimer begins an almost obsessive search for the story of Dimitrios. We readers become ensnared in a shabby, greedy, politically dangerous Central Europe that foreshadows not only WWII, but also the chaos in the Balkans of the 1990s. We meet unsavory characters in Istanbul, Smyrna, Sofia, Geneva, and Paris; the research into the life of Dimitrios is no longer academic.

The historical setting feels authentic. I could not avoid being aware that this fictional story would be soon followed by a horrendous event. Eric Ambler, like many Europeans in 1939, expected war, but not a war of the magnitude that was to occur. One of his characters says: My latest information is that war will not break out until the spring; so there will be time for some skiing.

Eric Ambler is recognized as a major influence on Graham Greene, Len Deighton, and John LeCarre and other practitioners of sophisticated political thrillers. Ian Fleming is even said to have had James Bond observe that Ambler was a favorite author. If some aspects of Ambler's story seem familiar, remember that it is others that copied him.

Movie buffs might be aware that in 1944 Peter Lorre played the role of Latimer (renamed Layman, for some obscure reason) in a popular film version titled The Mask of Dimitrios. It was directed by Jean Negulesco.

If you are a reader of mysteries and haven't read any Eric Ambler, start with this one. It combines a compelling story with a tight plot and very interesting characters. The writing is top notch as well.

Eric Ambler pretty much invented the modern spy thriller and Coffin for Dimitrios (originally published in the UK as Mask of Dimitrios) is his best known work - perhaps in part because it was made into a movie in 1944.

Charles Latimer writes "detection novels" (romans policiers) and is slowly drawn into research on the story behind the murder of Dimitrios - who was Dimitrios and how did he end up floating in a Turkish harbor? Latimer begins to trace Dimitrios' known movements through Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Switzerland, France, and Croatia. What begins as mere professional curiosity eventually becomes deadly serious.

The storyline gets pretty complex - Dimitrios is involved in a couple assasination plots possibly with the backing of an international bank, but those events are mostly kept in the background. Latimer meets Mr. Peters who has his own plans regarding Dimitrios (Sydney Greenstreet is perfectly cast as Mr. Peters in the movie).

The highlight of the book is the lengthy description of Dimitrios' exploitation of a Yugolsavian bureaucrat's greed and sense of self-importance.

The best book by the guy who started noir.

Ambler was the leading English thriller writer of his time and although now perhaps somewhat forgotten this book still has plenty to offer to those who take the time to read it. Ambler writes objectively in the third person in a style that is economical and is focussed on the plot. Every now and then you find a line in the book that reminds you that Ambler really was a master.

The storyline here follows the journey of an English crime writer called Charles Latimer who decides to trace the life of Dimitrios - a ruthless criminal whose body has been found washed up in Turkey. As Latimer traces his way across Europe, his enquires about Dimitrios come to the attention of players in the seedy underworld of the late 1930's. Before he knows what is happening Latimer finds himself in the middle of some action far more real than that he has written about in his books. Overall this is an enjoyable and suspenseful plot with a satisfying ending.

Those who enjoy reading thrillers should have a go at reading this great book from 1939. Time has taken little away from what Ambler has done here and it makes for impressive and rapid reading.

Charles Latimer is the unlikely protagonist in this classic work by legendary spymaster Eric Ambler. Latimer is a university professor turned moderately successful crime novelist. While visiting Istanbul, he learns quite by chance that the body of a career criminal named Dimitrios has recently been fished out of the Bosphorus. Latimer becomes fascinated by the extent and international flavor of Dimitrios' "rap sheet" and takes it upon himself to retrace the archcriminal's travels over the preceeding 16 or so years.
This project takes Latimer from Turkey to Greece, from Greece to Bulgaria, from Bulgaria to Switzerland, from....well you get the idea. At each stop along the way more disturbing information about Dimitrios is revealed. Before long both Latimer and the reader come to appreciate what a sinister, ruthless snake Dimitrios must have been. To reveal anymore might spoil the fun.
Written with understated wit, A Coffin for Dimitrios is well crafted, entertaining and, dare I say it, educational. Originally published 65 years ago, it holds up remarkably well. This is one novel of international intrigue you will not want to miss.