Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Eric Ambler "The Mask Of Dimitrios" (Penguin Modern Classics)



Charles Latimer, a former lecturer of political economy, quits the academic world and becomes a writer of crime fiction, with such titles to his credit as "A Bloody Shovel," "I, Said the Fly," and "Murder's Arms." He does all right as a novelist and decides one day that he needs a change of scene. Off he goes on vacation to Istanbul, where he meets a Turkish secret policeman, a Col. Haki. Haki contrives some reason to speak to Latimer, then invites him to view a corpse which has recently washed up onto shore from the Bosphorus. As it turns out, the body belongs to one Dimitrios Makropoulous, whose dossier is full of political machinations and other crimes. Latimer is convinced that if he could retrace the steps of Dimitrios, and find out how his body washed up on shore, that he could write his best book yet. Armed with the info provided by Col. Haki, he does his best to find out just who was Dimitrios Makropolous...and enters into a world of intrigue and into the life of a very dangerous individual.

As a slim 1939 novel of intrigue, crime and mysterious identities following a too-curious American author who gets involved with real-life murder and betrayal in Eastern Europe, it is possibly the first noir style of the hard-boiled detective novel. Good characters and dialogue, with sharp writing, a fun read with a dash of pleasantly Byzantine pre-war regional politics; the ending is a bit plain but no big deal, it was a good story nonetheless. I recommend it.