Eric Ambler's "Cause For Alarm"

Nearly six months into this bloody challenge (Eddie Izzard eat your heart out) and I realise I haven't praised a book yet.

Well, here's one. It's only now I'm old that I've been able to see for myself how authors and books go out of fashion, and sometimes back into fashion. That seems to be the case with Eric Ambler who was deemed very outdated back in the thrusting eighties, but seems to be enjoying a wee revival.

Anyway I read this immediately after Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson who seems to be single-handedly keeping bookshops open right now. Nothing wrong with that book (that losing 200 pages wouldn't cure) and no doubt I'll read the other two of his in due course.

I enjoyed Ambler's book much more. His tale of an armaments engineer trapped in fascist Italy on the eve of the second world war reads like a socialist version of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Good stuff.

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