posted on 05 Jun 2023

The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

Eric Ambler is not, I would suggest, a name well known to the modern day reader of thriller/spy/espionage literature but his early novels are highly regarded by writers of the genre. The Mask of Dimitrios, published in 1939, was recommended to me by a regular contributor to this site and is thought by many of his admirers to be the very best and a book that changed the face of the crime thriller. In his foreword to the 2009 Penguin Classic edition of the book, Mark Mazower claims that it is “a manifesto for a new kind of crime novel, a bomb intended to blow up the vicarage whodunnit” – a book that reflects the changing shape of a Europe sliding into cataclysmic war.

The book is saturated in a sort of weary acknowledgement of perfidy and treachery. Europe is sketched as a continent in thrall to a combined network of criminal activity that centres on the Balkans but has tentacles that reach across to the very shores of the UK. Stepping into this boiling melting-pot is the seemingly innocent and wide-eyed Charles Latimer, a former academic at a minor university who has, almost accidentally, become a best selling author of those traditional crime novels that this book is destined to sweep away.

In search of the Mediterranean sun he craves, Latimer finds himself in Turkey where he meets Colonel Haki, a police officer who has aspirations to be a writer of crime novels himself. In exchange for Latimer’s views on his ideas, Haki offers the Englishman a chance to see inside a real crime scene – the murder of a petty criminal called Dimitrios whose bloated body has been fished out of the harbour. This brush with reality triggers Latimer’s curiosity and he makes a decision that will take him into the heart of corrupt Europe: he will trace back the life of Dimitrios and reconstruct who he was and how he ended up in this Turkish mortuary. 

The book proceeds then in a series of episodes that are constructed around Latimer’s interviews with characters who start to reveal just how complex Dimistrios’ connections were. Latimer finds himself naively adrift amongst people who know more than they tell but who still give him a glimpse of a world that is driven by violence, people trafficking and, at its heart, drug dealing on an industrial and international scale.

All of this will set him on a path to a denouement that will threaten his life and change forever the way he sees the world. For much of this journey he’s accompanied or steered along some dubious paths by the splendidly sinister and Machiavellian character of Mr Peters – a player in this world of drug peddling who has his own reasons for wanting to find out whether Dimitrios is really the man Latimer saw in that Turkish mortuary.

Ambler throws back the covers on a Europe that’s beyond good and evil and the amorality Latimer is forced to deal with tests his seemingly parochial Englishness. Atmospheric and ingenious as the book is, for me, the point-of-view narration provided by Latimer betrays the one real weakness of the book – Latimer himself. There’s a line to be drawn between the ingenuous and the downright dunderheaded and I think Latimer’s naivety and incredulity take us over that line once too often. It’s hard to see such a man surviving the machinations of the drug dealers and the criminals that line the route of his journey. I was pleased to see Thomas Jones, reviewing the reissue of the book in The Guardian in 2009 (alongside three others from Ambler’s early catalogue) came to a very similar conclusion:

“…. for me at any rate, Latimer is the least engaging of Ambler's prewar protagonists: it's hard to have patience with a man who so wilfully gets himself into trouble. …. Latimer's a bit too much of a fool.”

That’s not to say that the book isn’t a damn good read and quite clearly hugely influential on what comes after – especially is you’re a fan of Graham Greene. The book is worth it if just for the character of the engaging but ultimately unpleasant Mr. Peters who Ambler, maybe unwittingly, turns into the star of the show. The film adaptation of the book in 1944 cast Sydney Greenstreet as the fleshy Peters and its such a perfect bit of casting that you’ll struggle to get him out of your minds eye as you read the book.

Paperback copies of the Mask of Dimitrios are easy to find and well under £10. The first edition hardback is quite another matter and you’d have to have very deep pockets if you want one of those.

 

Terry Potter

June 2023