Customer Reviews

The Levanter

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A Levanter is an inhabitant of the Levant, the countries of the eastern Mediterranean.

I am new to Eric Ambler. In recent months I have read and reviewed two stories from his early career, A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939) and Journey into Fear (1940), one from his mid-career (The Light of Day, 1962), and now his 1972 novel, The Levanter.

His early writing career was interrupted by WWII. Entering as a private in the Royal Artillery and serving in Italy, Ambler was later assigned to a combat photographic unit. Ambler ultimately earned the rank of lieutenant colonel and although British, he was even awarded an American Bronze Star.

His postwar career focused more on writing screenplays for Hollywood and television, but he did continue to write an occasional new espionage story. The Levanter (1972) was among his last books.

His early stories have exciting plots, but his early characters lack the fascinating complexity of his misguided and all-to-clever protagonist, Michael Howell, found in the Levanter. I quite enjoyed The Levanter and I believe that it compares favorably with the early John LeCarre novels.

In The Levanter Ambler tells a story through the eyes of three characters: Lewis Prescott (an experienced journalist interested in Michael Howell's situation) in chapters 1, 3, and 8, Michael Howell himself in chapters 2, 4, 6, and 7; and Teresa Malandra (Michael's secretary and lover) in chapter 5.

The setting is 1970 Syria, three years after the Six Days War. The Baathist Party, in power since 1963, has been steadily nationalizing all industry and Michael Howell considers his family's (third generation) commercial holdings at great risk. His plans to cleverly shelter his Syrian operations come apart when he involuntarily becomes an integral component in a plot to launch a substantial terrorist attack on Israel.

I was disconcerted by one aspect of Ambler's story. Despite the passage of three decades, The Levanter still reads like a contemporary novel. Today, for political and security reasons Israel still holds territory acquired during the Six Days War while the Syrian Baathist party continues to covertly (and not so covertly) support terrorist activities against Israel.

Eric Ambler had a talent for setting his stories in historically interesting places and times. In the 1930's he wrote about the rise of facism. After the War, he wrote suspense stories set behind the newly erected Iron Curtain. In the 1950's, he switched his focus to Southeast Asia and wrote about the newly emerging nations of the region in the aftermath of their wars of liberation. So it is not surprising that in 1972, Ambler moved his attention to the Middle East and the Arab Israeli conflict.

Michael Howell is a classic Eric Ambler character. Although he has an English last name, Michael Howell's family heritage is principally a mix of Lebanese Armenian and Greek Cypriot. He is a member of that class of creative Eastern Mediterrean businessmen who over the centuries have successfully engaged in commerce in the notoriously difficult business climate of the Middle East. To survive in that harsh world, a businessman needs to be cosmopolitan, quick witted and highly imaginative. Michael Howell's family shipping business is doing well until he becomes unintentionally involved in the Palestinian Israeli conflict.

When Ambler is at his best, "Passage of Arms", "Judgement for Delchev" or a "Coffin for Demetrios", he is one of the finest political suspense writers to have ever graced the genre. The "Levanter" is very good but it is not one of his classic books. Start with the classics and when you have exhausted them, move to his second tier works like "The Levanter." Even his second tier works are very good.

To read or not to read the great espionage 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 clich?-infested."

So what's new and different about Eric Ambler's 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 many 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 and Middle Eastern 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 The Levanter. In this novel, we find Mr. Ambler operating at his full powers, combining remarkable character development with complex plots and delicious ambiguity. You will be reminded of Mr. Le Carre.

Uncharacteristically, his protagonist, Michael Howell, is a man of great intelligence, sophistication and subtlety. So he can take on a greater threat than anyone else. Fascinated by the problem of extracting his family's investments from Lebanon, he's been collaborating with the government in covert activities. This backfires when he accidentally learns that one of his factories has been taken over by the Palestinian Action Force as a base for terrorist activities. Howell finds himself forced to help implement an anti-Israeli raid. How will he overcome this challenge?

Howell is one of Ambler's best characters, full of moral ambiguity. He's so good at looking out for his own interests, that he constantly is taking advantage even of those who are trying to take advantage of him. In this book, we get a sense of the mental and moral toughness of a trader. I found the book to seem immensely realistic.

The story telling is strengthened by varying the role of who the narrator is so that you see more dimensions of the plot. Part of the story is told by Howell, part by Lewis Prescott (a journalist hose attempting to sort out what really happened) and part by Teresa Malandra (Howell's co-worker in Lebanon and mistress). I'm sure that small businessmen in Middle Eastern countries still face the issues exposed in this plot, which makes the story chillingly timely, even though it is set in the late sixties.
Howell's solution to the problem is quite original and interesting. I think you'll enjoy it.

After you finish this story, think about where your principles are compromised by the actions of others who are outside your control. How can you ensure that those inadvertent compromises do no harm?

This is my first Eric Ambler novel and I greatly enjoyed it. I especially liked the engineering and technical aspects of the story which, for me, added an interesting domension to a fine story of suspense and intrigue. The version I purchased is the newly released (2009) paperback. This was the most poorly edited book I have ever read. There were typographical errors on almost every page -- so many I actually began marking them as I read. It is obvious that this was desktop published from a word precessor version of the original text and the typing was done by a very inept typist. (I see some of the same mistakes I make when I use a word processor!) Besides letter transpositions, there were formatting errors and misspelled words. I doubt that the document was ever proof read before going to publication. Amazing that a publisher would release something that was done so poorly -- and that Amazon would sell it!

Actually one of his most incisive stories--this is news you should be getting from The Media but that would involve leaving the hotel bar.... 38 years after publication, you will learn more from The Levanter than you will from the New York Times.

Provided you can get through the typographical errors. These are legion--if a typo derby were held, this would win hands down. It's a disgrace. Quick perusal of the publication info reveals the copyright is now held by the publisher. The publisher typeset this edition. The publisher did not proofread its work. At times, you will be brought to a dead halt trying to figure out what the author actually wrote. In many cases--but not all--these are errors which the spellchecker would not spot. You buy this edition, get ready for a typo-fest.

Recommendation--save yourself grief you don't need and buy an earlier edition. And don't even think about further purchases from this publisher.

As a dedicated fan of spy literature, I was familiar with Ambler's A Coffin for Dmitrios as the book that arguably started the modern spy novel genre. I was not, however, familiar with The Levanter until I read an NYT story by Alan Furst that listed it as one of his top five favorite spy works. (The others: Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics) by Graham Greene, Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry, The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré, and Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg by Nina Berberova (as Furst notes Moura is not actually a spy novel, but is rather nonfiction written by a novelist).

Levanter, one of Ambler's last novels, is set in 1970 in the Middle East. Michael Howell is a "Middle Eastern businessman of complex ethnic descent" as Furst aptly puts it. Howell's family business empire straddles the Mediterranean, but is focused on the Arab side, and Howell is its sharp-minded unquestioned leader. After Syrian goes socialist, he begins to plan a strategic withdrawal that will preserve as much of the company or its assets as possible. He soon learns, however, that one of his factories has been taken over by a radical Palestinian group, also led by an unquestioned leader.

Howell finds himself an unwilling accomplice in a vast terrorist plot. To assure themselves of Howell's cooperation, the group's leader force Howell to swear loyalty and to sign a (phony - or is it really so phony?) confession that he is a "Zionist agent". Much of the book is then made up of Howell's attempts to learn the plot's details and to figure out a way to undermine it. Howell is no hero, however, as his efforts are always tempered by a strong sense of self-preservation of himself and his business empire.

Ambler tells the story by having several characters relate their version of events in a specific time period (the book's events take place between May and July). Howell is the main narrator, but Ambler also gives voice to decidedly different views from several journalists. Throughout the book the reader knows something happened that left Howell in a vague bad way of some sort (albeit not fatal given Howell's narration). Partly because of these disparate voices, Ambler's Levanter does not go in for clear cut tidy answers, but then you really shouldn't reads a spy novel for clarity. Ambler does provide some interesting history as he spins out the story. And he reminds us that the Middle East Conflict has been with us for a long, long time. (Can you remember the days of your youth when you actually thought the phrase 'peace process' had some meaning?). And in a surprise, we are also reminded that piracy has never really gone away, either.

A fascinating tale, well-told by one the masters. Highly recommended.

The 2009 House of Stratus paperback edition of this very good book is full of typos--I have never seen so many in a published book before. It is as if someone was working from a recording of the book and trying to type it. There are so many phonetically spelled words--it simply gets in the way of reading it. I would not recommend this edition. It is a shame because this is a tough book to find.The Levanter

The title character, the Levanter, is Michael Howell a rich industrialist whose base of operation is the Middle East. Howell is one fourth English, one fourth Lebanese-Armenian and one half Cypriot. A shrewd businessman who is also a trained engineer, Howell serves as CEO for his family's company, Agence Howell.

While seeing to business at the Syrian headquarters of Agence Howell, Michael becomes an unwilling accomplice to a Palestinian guerilla fighter named Salah Ghaled. Ghaled is planning a terrorist attack on Israel. An attack sufficiently destructive that it will make other better known Palestinian leaders accept him as a force to be reckoned with. Michael must pretend to cooperate with Ghaled while at the same time finding a way to foil his efforts.

The Levanter is a great book for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that Howell has a number of character flaws that make him a very unconventional protagonist. Also, while quite sympathetic to the Israeli cause, Ambler depicts the Israeli security man Howell tips off as surprisingly ungrateful for the vital information being revealed.

Realistic, appropriately cynical, well researched and as geopolitically relevant today as it was when first published in 1972, The Levanter is a very appealing work of international intrigue. Highly recommended.

After I had read this book from the library, I bought one as a gift for son-in-law because the Levanter is a spellbinding novel with subject pertinent today. Then I bought this older edition for myself to re-read at a later time.
The Levanter is well written and suspenseful with Interesting well-defined characters. One of the 5 best as rated by the Wall Street Journal's selections of thrillers and Eric Ambler's works. If you like Vince Flynn and "24"or Alan Furst, you will probably like the Levanter, by Eric Ambler. Not quite so much action, but the same type of intrigue and plot twists with a recognizable hero. I also have bought other novels by this master story teller. He is amazingly current though this book is nearly 30 yrs old. You have to keep reminding yourself that the story is set and written in the 1980's because it deals with the middle east and bombs.
Enjoy!!!

After I had read this book from the library, I bought one as a gift for my son-in-law because the Levanter is a spellbinding novel with subject pertinent today. Well written and suspenseful. Interesting well-defined characters. One of the 5 best as rated by the Wall Street Journal's selections of thrillers and Eric Ambler's works. If you like Vince Flynn and "24"or Alan Furst, you will probably like the Levanter, by Eric Ambler. Not quite so much action, but the same type of intrigue and well defined "heros". I also have bought other novels by this master story teller. The Levanter is amazingly current though written in 1980's, and the plot line involves the middle east and nuclear weapons!
Enjoy!!!