Six Degrees of Separation: From Theory & Practice to The Paris Diversion

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Theory & Practice  by Michelle de Kretser. This book won the Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and championing diversity and cultural change. Theory & Practice is described as autofiction; thus it is a blend between autobiography and fiction. When I was looking into this subgenre of fiction, I was both confused and interested in all the descriptions and various interpretations. 

1st degree:

My first link will be to Outline by Rachel Cusk, which is also described as autofiction. I have that book on my shelves, unread. So I hope to give it a try soon.

The main character in Outline is a novelist who goes to Athens, Greece to teach a writing course during the summer. She has ten conversations with people she meets on the way to Athens and during her stay there.

2nd degree:

The second link is to The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi. This book takes place mainly on the fictional Greek island, Thiminos. A woman is found dead at the bottom of a cliff; the local police call it an accident. Then a stranger comes to Thiminos from Athens, with the intention of solving her murder.

This is another book I have on my bookshelves. The Greek Detective series gets good reviews and I should read it soon.

3rd degree:

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler starts in Athens and ends up in Turkey.  Arthur Simpson, thief and con man, is hired to drive a car to Turkey. He does not know that he is smuggling illegal weapons in the car, and he is caught by border guards. The authorities force him to deliver the weapons to the people who hired him, in order to uncover their nefarious plans. 

The book was adapted to screen as Topkapi. Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred.

4th degree:

The James Bond spy thriller From Russia with Love (1957, Ian Fleming) is set in Instanbul, Turkey. The Russians plot to rid themselves of James Bond by faking the defection of a female cipher clerk. Bond is sent to Istanbul to help the defector escape. They take the Orient Express from Istanbul to Paris, where the story ends. Also made into a very successful film, starring Sean Connery.

5th degree:

A good portion of the last book took place on a train and it ended in Paris. That takes me to The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, a French author, screenwriter and film director. This novel was first published in French in 1962. The night train from Marseilles arrives in Paris. In the sleeping car, the body of a young woman is found dead. This is a police procedural and the investigation takes place in Paris.

6th degree:

My last link is to a book that also takes place in Paris. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. This is a very fast-paced thriller (at times) but the story is told very well.

This is another Six Degrees where I rediscovered some books on my own shelves that I have not read yet. 

My Six Degrees took me from Athens, Greece to Turkey and then ended up in Paris, France. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on August 2, 2025, and the starting book will be the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

  

Background to Danger: Eric Ambler

In my monthly reading summary in May, I described this book as a typical spy thriller by Eric Ambler, with the innocent bystander being pulled into a conspiracy unawares. Since I have only read four books by this author, it is a bit presumptuous of me to speak of his typical style of book, but Ambler is known for a recurrent theme of the amateur who gets involved with criminals or spies.

Kenton, the hero of this story, is a freelance journalist, and the reason that he is so good at his job is that he has the gift of being able to speak a foreign language as if it is his own. This gives him an edge in reporting on European politics and he gets the interesting stories more easily. However, he also has a major flaw; he cannot hold on to money. He has gambled all his money away while in Nuremberg, Germany and now owes money to a friend. He is headed to Vienna in hopes of borrowing money to pay him back. On the train, a stranger asks him to carry his money over the border; Kenton only agrees because the man promises to pay him three hundred marks, three times what he needs to repay the debt. And this is what leads to his involvement in the nefarious plot of this book.

This was a fun, entertaining spy story, not overly serious. Kenton meets up with Andreas Valeshoff and his sister Tamara, who are Russian agents. Valeshoff and Tamara are interesting characters and there are lots of adventures and thrills. And twists and turns that confused me at times. I liked reading a spy thriller set in Austria that was written before World War II had begun.

Background to Danger was initially published as Uncommon Danger in the UK. The book was made into a film starring Peter Lorre, as Valeshoff, Sydney Greenstreet as a villain, and George Raft as the hero (called Joe Barton in the film), and with a screen play by W. R. Burnett. Tamara was played by Brenda Marshall. I enjoyed the film and in general it kept to the same plot as the book. At first Peter Lorre as Valeshoff did not fit the picture I had of that character, but as I got used to him in the role, I changed my mind. There were two major differences that distinguish the film from the book, but I think the film is more enjoyable not knowing about those, so I will just recommend that you read the book and watch the movie.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 2001 (orig. pub. 1937)
Length:   280 pages
Format:   Trade paperback
Setting:   Austria
Genre:    Espionage fiction
Source:   I purchased my copy

Reading in May and Crime Fiction Pick of the Month

In May, I read five books, and four of them were crime fiction. I read one book that fits in the fantasy genre: The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. Pratchett's book was very enjoyable, although it took me a while to get into it. It was the first book by this author that I have read. I will save further thoughts on that for a full post.

The crime fiction books I read this month are:

• Fast Company by Marco Page
• The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean
• Background to Danger by Eric Ambler
• Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming

I suppose if I am pressed to pick a crime fiction favorite from this month's reading it would be Background to Danger. It is a typical spy thriller by Eric Ambler, with the innocent bystander being pulled into a conspiracy unawares. A bit more thrillerish than the other books by Ambler that I have read.

But truly, of the crime fiction books that I read, The Guns of Navarone and Diamonds Are Forever are right up there, only a smidgen below Background to Danger. All of them are adventurous thrillers that entertain.

This has been a year of wanting to do new projects related to reading. I would love to read more graphic novels and understand more about that format. But I already have a lot of "projects" going and I know I can't handle too much. So that one will have to wait.

I had planned to read a lot more short stories this year and I haven't done well with that. I enjoy short stories when I read them, but they don't call to me and I am not good at picking up one here or there to read. I do have an anthology I am planning to read this summer for a Friday Forgotten Books special edition (Grifters & Swindlers edited by Cynthia Mason).

Another personal project is to read all the Smiley books by John le Carré, and I am doing fine with that. I am reading The Honourable Schoolboy right now, almost 2/3 done with this 600 page chunkster. And liking it a lot.

And the most recent project is to read the James Bond books (and watch the associated movies). Also doing fine with that. That one is easy. The  books are different from what I remember, but they are engaging reads with great pacing. Never a dull moment. I was inspired by Moira at Clothes in Books, who has read and posted about Casino Royale through Goldfinger so far. I started with Live and Let Die in March and have read one a month so far. Tonight we will be watching our DVD of the film, Diamonds are Forever, with Sean Connery.

Epitaph for a Spy: Eric Ambler

Eric Ambler's spy novels often feature hapless individuals who are trapped in a situation they have no control over.  Normal men who get involved in situation through no fault of their own. I have only read a small sampling of Ambler's books so this information is gleaned from overviews of his works in reference books and on the web
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Josef Vadassy, the protagonist of Epitaph for a Spy, is a Hungarian refugee living in Paris. While on a vacation in St. Gatiens, he stumbles upon adventure.

I possess only two objects of value in this world. One of them is a camera, the other a letter dated February 10, 1867, from Deak to von Beust. If someone were to offer me money for the letter I should accept it thankfully; but I am very fond of the camera, and nothing but starvation would induce me to part with it. I am not a particularly good photographer; but I get a lot of pleasure pretending that I am.

I had been taking photographs at the Reserve and had, the previous day, taken an exposed spool into the village chemist’s shop to be developed. Now, in the ordinary way, I should not dream of letting anyone else develop my films. Half the pleasure of amateur photography lies in doing your own darkroom work. But I had been experimenting, and if I did not see the results of the experiments before I left St. Gatien, I should have no opportunity of making use of them. So I had left the film with the chemist. The negative was to be developed and dry by eleven o’clock.

And this is his downfall. He is arrested for possessing a suspicious roll of film.  Having no papers, he is at the mercy of the authorities, and is forced to help them in their inquiries. He must return to his hotel, mingle among the other guests, and determine who really took the pictures which got him in trouble.

Vadassy is a shy man, and even the idea of  attempting to pump strangers for information puts him in agony. Plus, even if he convinces the police he is innocent and can return to Paris, he has to get there on time or he will lose his job. So he is under double pressure to meet the deadline that the Secret Police have imposed upon him. There is a motley group of people staying at his hotel: an older British couple, two young Americans (brother and sister), a German, a Frenchman with his mistress, a Swiss couple.

This was only the third book by Ambler that I have read. The first one, A Coffin for Dimitrios (also published as The Mask of Dimitrios), is similar to Epitaph for a Spy. The Light of Day (later made into a film, Topkapi) is a lighter novel, about a petty thief and con-man, who gets mixed up in a complicated heist.

I liked this book and I am glad I read it. It did have long stretches of conversation where other guests tell their stories to Vadassy. That was also a characteristic of A Coffin for Dimitrios, and not my favorite storytelling style. I preferred this book, possibly because I empathized with the protagonist, with his shyness and his reluctance to get involved. He was really thrown into this situation whereas the hero of A Coffin for Dimitrios actively seeks to learn more of Dimitrios and his life.

Ambler provided a footnote to a 1952 edition of this book:

I wrote Epitaph for a Spy in 1937, and it was a mild attempt at realism. The central character is a stateless person, there are no professional devils, and the only Britisher in the story is anything but stalwart. I still like bits of it.

In a review of another novel by Ambler (at The Rap Sheet), Journey into Fear, Charles Cumming says:

He uses lengthy passages of dialogue, for example, to explore political ideas. ...
In exploring those ideas, Ambler elevates the spy novel to a different level, paving the way for the likes of Le Carré, Deighton, Alan Furst, and Dan Fesperman.

There was a film adaptation of this novel, Hotel Reserve, released in 1944. It starred James Mason, Lucie Mannheim, and Herbert Lom.

I will continue reading more espionage novels by Eric Ambler. I have a few more that he published in the 1930's and two published in the 1950's.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Bantam, 1952 (orig. pub. 1938)
Length:   164 pages
Format:   paperback
Setting:   small fishing village in France
Genre:    espionage fiction
Source:   Purchased my copy

The Light of Day: Eric Ambler

From the summary at Goodreads:

"When Arthur Abdel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with city and in need of a private driver. In other words, the perfect mark for Simpson’s brand of entrepreneurship. But Harper proves to be more the spider than the fly when he catches Simpson riffling his wallet for traveler’s checks."

The narrator of this book, Arthur Simpson, is a thief and a con-man. He isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and ends up being forced to cooperate with a man he had hoped to steal from. While working for him, Arthur is arrested for smuggling at the Turkish border, and then ends up cooperating with the Turkish authorities to infiltrate the band of "criminals" he is working with. And throughout it all he whines and complains about how nothing is his fault.

Opening lines of the book:

It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police. I had no choice but to do as this man Harper told me. He was entirely responsible for what happened to me.

Yet Arthur is very likeable and entertaining.  He goes into details of his English education, and relates how his childhood and his school experiences affected his later behavior and decisions. And in doing so, he reveals much about his character...

While Arthur is a very complex character, the rest of the group he is working with are not as well depicted.  There is a beautiful young woman (Elizabeth Lipp, the mastermind of the group), and several other men are co-conspirators. They all have important parts to play, but are not very interesting as characters. Arthur carries the book.

The Light of Day was the winner of the Best Mystery Edgar in 1964.  It was also made into a movie, Topkapi,  in 1964. I have watched that movie many times. The movie does differ from the book substantially, but knowing the gist of the story did affect my enjoyment of the book. If you have a choice, read the book first. The movie is great, although it feels dated now, but the book is better.

Jules Dassin directed the movie and the role of Elizabeth Lipp was played by Melina Mercouri.  Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred. In the movie, Arthur is very much the same kind of person, a bumbler and dishonest, but the movie does not give us as much depth as you get with the first person narration of a book. One major difference between the book and the movie is that the other characters are much more fleshed out. As this in-depth review says: "The Light of Day was narrated by Arthur Simpson, but Topkapi is Elizabeth Lipp’s story."

I recently read The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, and The Light of Day is more to my taste. I plan to read more books by Ambler, and I was pleasantly surprised today to find that I have two additional books that were lost in my TBR boxes. I knew I had Journey into Fear (part of a three book omnibus), but now I find that I have Epitaph for a Spy and Judgment on Deltchev. So I am set for a while.  Also ordering Background to Danger (US title for Uncommon Danger) soon.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
A-Z Challenge
European Reading Challenge
Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge  

A is for Eric Ambler

Eric Ambler is well known for espionage novels that are as much character driven as plot driven. His novels had more emphasis on political themes than the thrills of escapist adventures.

From the entry on Eric Ambler in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea:

"Eric Ambler was among the first to write spy novels not about dashing adventurers swashbuckling their way through danger, but about common people in unnerving and often squalid situations. His first novel, The Dark Frontier (1936), anticipated nuclear weapons; his last, The Care of Time (1981), discusses chemical warfare and the danger to the world of unbalanced leaders in the Middle East."

Earlier this month I read A Coffin for Dimitrios (published in 1939) and I just finished The Light of Day (published in 1962). I am on a mission to read more of his books in the next year or so.

In looking around the web (and reading through my mystery reference books), I have noticed that five of Ambler's novels were adapted as films.  I knew this was true of the two books I have read, but was surprised that there were so many. There have also been adaptations on TV.

I have already commented on the movie based on A Coffin for Dimitrios, in my review of the book.  The movie is titled The Mask of Dimitrios, as is the UK version of the book.

The Light of Day was adapted in a film called Topkapi in 1964.  I have seen Topkapi several times; it is a popular movie in our household. I won't say having seen the movie detracts from the experience of reading the book, because the novel has more depth in characterization and I enjoyed it very much. However, I do think it would be preferable to read the book with no knowledge of the story.

I won't say too much about the film here, I will cover it more when I review the book. Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley and Melina Mercouri star in this film which features Peter Ustinov's Oscar- winning Supporting Actor performance. Directed by Jules Dassin.

Uncommon Danger, Ambler's second novel, is described in an overview on the California Literary Review:

"...the central character, Nicholas Kenton, is an archetypal antihero rather than the conventional ultra-patriotic hero of earlier thrillers. A cosmopolitan journalist, Kenton is the model for the typical Ambler protagonist in subsequent novels: an ordinary, unexceptional person who, by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, is suddenly involved in a network of political and criminal duplicity of which he was previously unaware."

The movie based on the book, titled Background to Danger, stars George Raft, with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. That title is the same one used for the US version of the book.

DVD Beaver has this to say about Background to Danger:

"Maybe not up there with the best of Walsh's action pics, but still an efficient and entertaining WWII spy thriller. Raft is the American agent travelling to Turkey to prevent the country from allying itself with the Nazis, and encountering that colourful pair, Greenstreet (a Nazi) and Lorre (his Turkish opponent) en route."

Uncommon Danger was published in 1938, and the following year Ambler published Epitaph for a Spy. That book is described in this post at Slate magazine.

That book was made into a movie in 1944. It was called Hotel Reserve, and it starred James Mason, Lucie Mannheim, and Herbert Lom.

There is a good overview of the movie at Mystery*File. The author of the post did not like the movie very much, but several comments presented different opinions. So it is a balanced discussion with a lot of interesting facts.

Journey Into Fear will be the next book I read by Eric Ambler. Primarily because I have a copy to read already. But also because of this very interesting post and recommendation from author Charles Cummings at the Rap Sheet.

Journey Into Fear was also made into a movie, featured in this post at Noir of the Week. As the post mentions, rumors abound that Orson Welles directed at least part of the film, even though Welles denied it. In addition to Delores Del Rio and Welles, the film stars Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotten, and Ruth Warrick, all of whom were directed by Welles in Citizen Kane.

I am excited to be participating in the Crime Fiction Alphabet community meme this year.  Check here for other submissions for the letter A.

A Coffin for Dimitrios: Eric Ambler

Plot summary and description from The Mystery Lover's Companion by Art Bourgeau:

"In one of the great intrigue novels, a writer delves into the muddy past of a mysterious, international double-dealing spy. The writer of academic detective novels discovers the difference between fiction and reality when he becomes involved in murder."

In that book, the rating is Five Daggers (A True Classic).

When I read a book that is hailed as a mystery classic with so much already written about it, it colors my experience and my enjoyment. No way to avoid this really. I am thinking too much about the book as I read it. Looking for its classic elements, what makes it rise above the rest, rather than just going along for the ride as a new experience.

Did I enjoy A Coffin for Dimitrios? Most of the time, yes.

Does it have a good plot? Yes. My quibble is with the execution, how we get from beginning to end. This is a book that slowed down in the middle for me. I enjoyed the setup in the first few chapters and it had a great ending. But the advancement of plot in between was often told in narration by one character or another, and I was impatient for it to get somewhere. In fact, I think my problem with the book was being too impatient, reading too fast, not savoring the story as it unfolds. This is a book I will reread, and I think I will enjoy it more the next time.

Is the characterization good? Yes and no.  There was not a lot of depth, but true character of some of the players was revealed bit by bit. Were they victims or willing accomplices? What kind of person was Dimitrios?

What I did get into was the picture of evil and depravity.  Telling the story at turns from the point of view of criminals who really don't consider that they have done wrong or that there were other options in their lives was interesting and appalling. And it had a very unexpected ending, and I like that.

I do not know if I have read A Coffin for Dimitrios before. I am fairly sure I have read books by Eric Ambler, but it would have been many years ago. When I was younger (in my teens and early twenties) I read faster, read more, read a lot from the library, and read a lot of classics. But even then I was reading mostly mysteries (Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Patricia Moyes, George Bagby, Allingham, Sayers).

This book and several others by Eric Ambler were written immediately before, during, and after World War II. I enjoy reading books from that time period to get the feel of what people were thinking and experiencing at that time. I recently read two books by Christianna Brand that were written around the same time as this book: Heads You Lose (1941) and Green for Danger (1944). Only Green for Danger was specifically about the war, but the daily events that affected people during and before the war were also mentioned in Heads You Lose.

I am looking forward to reading more Eric Ambler books. He published books from 1936 to 1981. At the top of my list are The Light of Day and Journey into Fear, because I have a copy of those two. Next I want to find other spy fiction, especially set around the time of World War II. There is a movie based on this book, with the same title as the original English title of the book: The Mask of Dimitrios. I would love to see this, but it doesn't appear to be available on DVD.

This counts as one of my books for the following challenges:
Mt. TBR Challenge
Read Your Own Books Challenge
Vintage Mystery Challenge
Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge

Book Beginnings: A Coffin for Dimitrios

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a meme with this theme: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Visit the post at Rose City Reader and viewing the other links and get a glimpse of books you may not be familiar with.



The first two sentences in the book I am currently reading are:

A Frenchman named Chamfort, who should have known better, once said that chance was a nickname for Providence.

It is one of those convenient, question-begging aphorisms coined to discredit the unpleasant truth that chance plays an important, if not predominant, part in human affairs.

The book is A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler.

I am only a few pages into the book, but I already know I will like it. I don't think this is the first time I read this book or this author, but if I did read it, I was very young. So it will be a new experience.

The book cover pictured is not the one I have. I am reading the book in a Quality Paperback Book Club edition that combines it with two other books by Ambler, Journey into Fear and The Light of Day. But I would love to have that copy. I collect vintage paperbacks.

The excerpt above reminds me of a quote from an Astaire and Rogers film (The Gay Divorcee): 

Chance is the fool's name for fate.

I enjoy both vintage mysteries and vintage movies.