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A Coffin for Dimitrios

(Charles Latimer #1)

Eric Ambler

3.92 · Rating details · 8,156 ratings · 626 reviews

A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel with a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a plot for his next ...more

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Kindle Edition, 309 pages

Published by Vintage Books (first published 1939)

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Aug 10, 2014 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

When I first heard “ISIL” substituted for “ISIS,” I thought “What the heck does the 'L' stand for?” Somebody told me it stood for “the Levant,” and I immediately thought of The Mask of Dimitrios,” my favorite novel of international intrigue.

What is “the Levant”? It is the once-fashionable term for the countries of the eastern Mediterranean rim, comprising ancient Canaan and Asia Minor: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey. Add to this the Levant's primary areas of influence—Cyprus,G
When I first heard “ISIL” substituted for “ISIS,” I thought “What the heck does the 'L' stand for?” Somebody told me it stood for “the Levant,” and I immediately thought of The Mask of Dimitrios,” my favorite novel of international intrigue.

What is “the Levant”? It is the once-fashionable term for the countries of the eastern Mediterranean rim, comprising ancient Canaan and Asia Minor: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey. Add to this the Levant's primary areas of influence—Cyprus,Greece, the Balkans—and you have the core of Mehmed II's first Caliphate, for centuries the area where—for good and ill—the Islamic Near East opened itself to the West. And today—bringing us back to the “L” in ISIL—it is the western boundary of what the so-called “Islamic State” consider their rightful sphere.

From the early '20's until the end of the '30's, the time period of Eric Ambler's Dimitrios, there was little talk of radical Islam in the Levant—not surprising, given the heavy hand of the secularist Turkish state—but there was plenty of ethnic cleansing, ideological conflict, political assassination, and crime. Turk slaughtered Armenian, capitalist battled socialist, prime ministers were assassinated, drugs, women and state secrets were bought and sold, and the fascists and communists—delighting in the general unrest—took what advantage they could. Perhaps even more frightening were those individual psychopaths, the fixers, the brokers, the bankers: amoral entrepreneurs who exploited even the fascists and communists, and always seemed to come out on top. The Mask of Dimitrios is a book about such a man.

Dimitrios Makropolous is an interesting character, but it is the manner in which Ambler tells his story—a manner which anticipates the structure of Citizen Kane—that makes it so engaging. Our detective novelist narrator is shown a corpse in the Istanbul morgue and becomes obsessed with discovering the victim's history. As he journeys from Istanbul to Athens, from Geneva to Paris, he interviews people who have known Dimitrios, and each one—the leftwing journalist, the female cafe owner, the master spy, the human-trafficker—has a story to tell. Not only is each of the settings--from a sleazy Athens cafe to a Swiss mountain villa—perfectly realized, but the voice of each subsidiary narrator is individualized as well. Moreover, many of these narrators comment ironically about the principal narrator's naivete or his questionable motives, and this too gives the novel depth and breadth.

Whatever your judgment of Dimitrios Makropolous may be, I am convinced that his grandsons are still with us. Although they are not members of ISIL, Boko Haram or the Taliban, they are there, acting as their middlemen, always ready to make a buck: helping them to choose lucrative targets for kidnapping, to sell their female captives into slavery, to send their heroin through Marseilles to the West. ...more

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Nov 03, 2013 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: spies

”A man’s features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for their fulfilment and which his fears demand for their protection from prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. If he is afraid, then he must be feared, if he desires, then he must be desir ...more

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Oct 29, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mystery-and-spy-fiction

This was a fun read. According to the jacket this was the first novel in which an everyman is caught in a web of international intrigue. It is very reminiscent of the 39 Steps. One could see Sydney Greenstreet, for example, in the role of Mister Peters. (Or, as it turns out, one did, and forgot that he had. Oops)

description

Greenstreet as Peters in The Mask of Dimitrios

The protagonist, Mister Latimer, is an economist turned mystery writer who meets a Turkish head of Secret Police in Istanbul. He comes alo ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: british

A Better Hope

Anthony Hope, John Buchan, Erskine Childers, and Eric Ambler stole my youth, or at least its imagination. They taught me two important things: that rumours were probably true; and that the world was culturally English (or wanted to be). The first piqued my boyhood interest in conspiracy; the second provided reassurance that conspiracy would be thwarted by virtue. Both these things turned out to be false. But I have no regrets about believing either.

No one seduced me more effectively ...more

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Dec 24, 2018 Richard Derus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: returned, borrowed

Excellent between-the-wars spy story that sets the bar for later entries into the genre. The tale has also given numerous parts of itself to other writers. A solid bit of Charade, that delightful 1963 Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn spies-in-Paris story, came from this 1939 tale.

But the main thing about reading the book, the primary pleasure unavailable to viewers of the 1944 film The Mask of Dimitrios, is that the movie timeframe makes the story more or less a highlight reel. It also seemed a bit off ...more

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Aug 22, 2018 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, fiction, france, turkey, espionage, greece, bulgaria

So surprising for me to find this early spy novel to be among the best for tapping into the heart of the “Game” that nations have plied against nations to stay ahead. I read that Ambler finished this work at the perilous time when the Nazis were invading Czechoslovakia in 1939. The lead character Charles Latimer is a novelist who like Ambler himself, gets inspired about international intrigue from the multicultural society he experienced in Istanbul. As a teenager I made the trip he took by boat So surprising for me to find this early spy novel to be among the best for tapping into the heart of the “Game” that nations have plied against nations to stay ahead. I read that Ambler finished this work at the perilous time when the Nazis were invading Czechoslovakia in 1939. The lead character Charles Latimer is a novelist who like Ambler himself, gets inspired about international intrigue from the multicultural society he experienced in Istanbul. As a teenager I made the trip he took by boat from Piraeus to Istanbul and experienced the otherworldly sense he got from arrival by water to the bustling harbor of that ancient city with its skyline dominated by famous mosques in their architectural splendor. This parallel hooked me from the beginning.

Latimer milks his contacts to get invited to a party of aristocrats, diplomats, and ex-patriates of various exotic places. Bored by the boozing, the chatter, and decadence (some guests are playing strip poker), he perks up with a conversation with one Colonel Haki, who claims to admire his murder mysteries and offers him plot ideas. It turns out he is the head of the Turkish secret police and has just identified the body of a man fished out of the Bosphorus who was killed by stabbing. A French visa sewn into his jacket indicates him to be Dimitrios Makropoulos, whom Haki has sought since 1922 for the robbery and murder of a Muslimized Jew in Smyrna (Izmir) during the time of terrible slaughter between Greece and Turkey.

From their common interest of making art out of crime and intrigue, Haki challenges Latimer to see anything romantic or noble about the life of Dimitrios. He treats him to a viewing of the body at the morgue:

“Here is a real murderer. We have known of his existence for nearly twenty years. …This man is typical. A dirty type, common, cowardly, scum. Murder, espionage, drugs—that is the history. There were also two affairs of assassination.”
“Assassination! That argues a certain courage, surely?”

Haki denies that. No, this type of man does none of the risky dirty work himself:
They are the professionals, the entrepreneurs, the links between the businessmen, the politicians who desire the end but are afraid of the means, and the fanatics, the idealists who are prepared to die for their convictions.
As far as I know, no government has ever caught him and there is no photograph in his dossier. But we knew him all right, and so did Sofia and Belgrade and Paris and Athens. He was a great traveler, was Dimitrios.

In preparing to dispose of Dimitrios decaying body, Haki hooks Latimer with the idea of filling in the huge blanks in his dossier:
But there must be people who knew of Dimitrios, his friends (if he had any), and his enemies, people in Smyrna, people in Sophia, people in Belgrade, in Adrianople, in Paris, in Lyons, people all over Europe, who could answer them. If you could find those people and get the answers you would have the material for what would surely be the strangest of biographies.
Latimer’s heart missed a beat. …If one did it one would begin with, say, Smyrna, and try to follow one’s man step by step from thjere, using the dossier as a rough guide. It would be an experiment in detection really. …Not that any man in his senses would dream of going on such a wild goose chase—heavens no! But it was amusing to play with the idea and if one were a little tired of Istanbul …

And so Latimer takes up the harmless task of asking questions about this mysterious and notorious figure to satisfy his literary curiosity. But soon, his questions draws the attention of others with an interest in Dimitrios’ secrets. Latimer has to figure out who are Dimitrios’ cohorts who want the secrets to stay that way and who are his enemies and maybe want revenge or money he might have hidden away. Either way, the answers could be dangerous to Latimer. As an average kind of man with a lack of defensive skills, he experiences reasonable trepidations. But he finds he has become obsessed with his pursuit and can’t stop. The suspense drew me on as he makes his rounds with a colorful set of characters as sources in exotic locales of seedy bars and nightclubs in various cities in the Balkans, Paris, and Greece.

Despite a minimum violent pyrotechnics common to modern spy thrillers, this tale entertained me well with its slow unfolding of secrets and atmospherics. It also had a very satisfying surprise ending. It sits well among my old favorites of the genre set during the Cold War by Deighton and le Carre. After that beginning decades ago, I have long been disappointed with the horde of novelists I’ve tried in their wake.
...more

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Oct 15, 2016 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: great-britain, crime-fiction, political

Sometimes digging around in the past is just a bad idea, and for British crime writer Charles Latimer he certainly ends up way out of his league, after befriending an inspector from the Turkish police while staying in Istanbul he learns that master criminal Dimitrios Makropoulos has just been fished out the water, killed by an apparent knife to the back. Latimer takes an interest in this mysterious Dimitrios and decides to try and delve into his history to write a true crime novel rather one of ...more

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Dec 23, 2020 Jamie rated it it was amazing

A fantastically gripping journey into an ordinary man's obsession with the life of a detestable criminal.

After the apparent death of wanted criminal Dimitrios Makropolous in Turkey, mystery writer Charles Latimer is drawn into an "experiment in detection" despite his better judgement. He begins tracing Dimitrios's mysterious past, traveling across Europe to uncover any information he can about his life and past exploits. Each criminal affair Latimer uncovers becomes a fascinating episode, with b ...more

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Apr 15, 2014 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

“But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology.”
― Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios

description

It is hard not to like Eric Ambler's amateur spies. They aren't reluctant, rather lucky and persistent. They seem to have seeded an entire generation of suspense novelists. Reading Ambler I see exactly what inspired le Carre, Furst, Steinhauer, etc. Ambler has a voice and styl ...more

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Jul 31, 2019 Tristram Shandy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: noir, classic-english-literature, crimes-stories

“In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance.”

If you like your crime fiction a bit different from the eternal parlour games staged by writers like Agatha Christie, try reading The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, and you will experience a virtuoso mixture of a novel of detection and a portrait of Europe in the first half of the 19th century, a “In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance.”

If you like your crime fiction a bit different from the eternal parlour games staged by writers like Agatha Christie, try reading The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, and you will experience a virtuoso mixture of a novel of detection and a portrait of Europe in the first half of the 19th century, a time that was particularly marked by violence and ruthlessness. Ambler makes us share the dangerous obsession of Charles Latimer, a rather blasé and priggish university professor turned parsonage-mystery writer, that consists in finding out about a mysterious criminal named Dimitrios Makropoulos, whose corpse has been found in the Bosphorus. What starts as a mere whim of fancy, apparently, soon turns out to be a descent into the deepest nightmarish knowledge on human nature because the rather narrow-minded writer not only has to team up with a most insalubrious individual who calls himself Peters but he also has to realize that there exists a sort of evil that makes the villains in his novels look like pale imitations of life. And what’s more, while prying deeper and deeper into the grim past of that unscrupulous and determined man Dimitrios, Latimer not only risks his own life but he, too, will eventually resort to means that may go against the law or are at least questionable from the point of view he has up to now taken in life.

I have known the movie starring Peter Lorre as Latimer (although on screen, the English writer is made into a Dutchman called Leyden) and Sydney Greenstreet as the heavyset but prolix Mr. Peters for ages but only recently read the novel, and I must say that although the film is unforgettable – mainly due to Sydney Greenstreet’s way of creating his larger-than-life character –, it is definitely surpassed by the novel, and I can think of two reasons for saying this: First of all, Peter Lorre has always instilled some kind of sleazy, half-crazy shadiness into his characters, but the Charles Latimer described by Ambler is quite a different person: He has spent most of his life at English universities, which must definitely have been quite different from the places he visits and the persons he meets during his quest for knowledge about Dimitrios, the same as Great Britain, for all its problems after World War I, must have been paradise compared to the Balkans and many other regions in Europe after the Great War. It is one of the fascinating traits of this novel to see how a person like Latimer is wading deeper and deeper into the mire of crookedness and cynicism, and how he reacts to his awareness of this change.

Second, it is simply marvellous to see how Ambler, on the eve of the next World War, gave an account of European politics and the struggle for power that set nations against each other. When he wrote that novel, he had never visited the Balkans himself but only listened to the stories of Greek, Russian and other refugees as he sat in Turkish cafés in Nice but still he manages to create an impression of writing from first-hand experience, and his characters are overwhelmingly believable, especially in their vices and the darker recesses of their souls. While we follow Latimer through the half of Europe, we also learn what the new times are all about – how disturbing this realization must have been for contemporary readers, even though, in principle, not much has changed in our day and age – when the narrator states, from Latimer’s perspective:

”But it was useless to explain him [i.e. Dimitrios] in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town. The logic of Michelangelo’s David, Beethoven’s quartets and Einstein’s physics had been replaced by that of the Stock Exchange Book and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”

And, even more cynically, but clear-sightedly,

”Most international criminals were beyond the reach of man-made laws, but Dimitrios happened to be within reach of one law. He had committed at least two murders and had therefore broken the law as surely as if he had been starving and had stolen a loaf of bread.”

The novel starts a bit slowly but very soon gains momentum, speed and depth, and it is well worth persevering through the first two chapters because you will be rewarded with a clever, breath-taking story as well with a portrait of Europe at that time. I’d also recommend Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back as a parallel read. ...more

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Aug 02, 2017 Nigeyb rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Anything that is published by Penguin Modern Classics is instantly alluring in my mind and, given I’d heard positive things about Eric Ambler, I was keen to sample his work. I’d heard that 'The Mask of Dimitrios' (1939) (aka 'A Coffin for Dimitrios') was one of his very best.

Charles Latimer, an English crime novelist, is in Istanbul where he meets Colonel Haki of the Turkish secret police. Haki tells Latimer about Dimitrios Makropolous, a murderer, drug dealer, assassin and general rogue, whose ...more

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Sep 22, 2018 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: whodunitbymail, thriller, secret-agents-and-detectives, read2018, mystery

"[Dimitrios] had the appearance of being tame, but when you looked into his brown eyes you saw that he had none of the feelings that make ordinary men soft, that he was always dangerous."

Published prior to World War II (but aware of some of the tensions), this is a more cerebral spy novel featuring a crime writer who ends up investigating a murder. The novel starts with Latimer in Turkey, talking about his crime writing, and learning about a current police case. He sees the corpse of Dimitrios, ...more

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May 23, 2015 Sam Quixote rated it liked it · review of another edition

Set (and written) in the late 1930s, Charles Latimer is an English mystery novelist who learns about the roguish life of Dimitrios after he’s taken to view his corpse in the morgue. Murder, slavery, drugs, gambling, prostitutes – Dimitrios had his fingers in a lot of pies! Latimer becomes obsessed with the man’s life and decides to write a biography of the chap, following in his footsteps as he meets Dimitrios’ former criminal associates to build up a portrait of the complex figure. But Latimer’ Set (and written) in the late 1930s, Charles Latimer is an English mystery novelist who learns about the roguish life of Dimitrios after he’s taken to view his corpse in the morgue. Murder, slavery, drugs, gambling, prostitutes – Dimitrios had his fingers in a lot of pies! Latimer becomes obsessed with the man’s life and decides to write a biography of the chap, following in his footsteps as he meets Dimitrios’ former criminal associates to build up a portrait of the complex figure. But Latimer’s journey gets the attention of some shady figures with their own interest in “Dimitrios”…

The Mask of Dimitrios (published in the United States as A Coffin For Dimitrios) is described as a mystery thriller overshadowed by the encroaching darkness of fascism in Europe – and it’s none of those things! There’s no mystery to the story. Modern readers will easily see the twist ending of the book looooooong before it comes – I called it in the first chapter and I was right! “Thriller”? The book is largely made up of scenes where Latimer and a character or two sit down before someone begins a 10/20/30 page monologue. And the Germans and Italians possibly starting a war is only mentioned in passing in the last three pages of the book with no strong fascistic presence elsewhere.

That’s not to say I disliked the novel. Eric Ambler’s a fine writer and it’s easy to see how strongly he influenced later novelists like John le Carré as this shows him laying the blueprint for the modern political thriller. But Latimer is a blank slate who is exactly the same at the end as he was at the beginning. I know the story’s not really about him but still, having a semi-interesting protagonist would’ve been nice.

Ambler does create a brilliant character in Mr Peters, an elderly, overweight criminal with watery eyes and a distaste for violence and crime, whose alignment keeps you guessing until the end – is he on Latimer’s side or not? He’s definitely a villain but can he find redemption – does he even want to? We’re kept wondering about this strange fellow. It’s interesting that, in a book featuring Latimer as the protagonist and Dimitrios as the engine, Peters is by far the most memorable character in the story. I suppose that’s due to Peters actually being written as a character rather than as bland audience stand-in (Latimer) or a motivation (Dimitrios).

Though it’s hardly pulse-pounding to hear one character at a time relate lengthy stories about Dimitrios to Latimer, they’re compelling enough for the most part. The guy led an interesting – if despicable - life and hearing about his Scarface-esque construction of a criminal empire from nothing is quite good. But what it builds towards isn’t anywhere exciting. Besides being predictable, the finale is a bit anticlimactic because it’s clichéd and boring.

The Mask of Dimitrios has some good moments here and there, and it’s a decent early, ahem, “thriller” at a time when I’m sure it was considered pacey. But it hasn’t aged that well and, today in comparison and much like Poe and Conan Doyle’s now antiquated detective stories, Ambler’s tricks are quite average leading to an underwhelming story. The Mask of Dimitrios has become a period piece now but still a readable one. ...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Helen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: espionage

If I'd read this in 1939, I'm sure I would have been breathless with astonishment. But I've read John Le Carre and Alan Furst, I know too much about the ugliness of World War II, and in our day and age, we all know about the hypocrisy and duplicity and self-interest of nations.

But Eric Ambler invented this genre, political mystery/thrillers raw with realistic criminals and spies, describing the brilliance, decadence, shabbiness and ambiguity of the secret world.

Enter Charles Latimer. A retired If I'd read this in 1939, I'm sure I would have been breathless with astonishment. But I've read John Le Carre and Alan Furst, I know too much about the ugliness of World War II, and in our day and age, we all know about the hypocrisy and duplicity and self-interest of nations.

But Eric Ambler invented this genre, political mystery/thrillers raw with realistic criminals and spies, describing the brilliance, decadence, shabbiness and ambiguity of the secret world.

Enter Charles Latimer. A retired academic, he writes crime novels. At a party, he meets the chief of Istanbul's secret police, who tells him, as everyone does, that he would write a crime novel if he had the time. He asks Latimer if he'd like to get a little closer to real crime...and then brings him to the morgue, where he shows him the water-logged corpse of an infamous criminal named Dimitrios.

Dimitrios is a twisted Gatsby. Struggling to survive in a post-World War I society of war, catastrophe, and genocidal hatred, he dreams of a better life for himself, and creates it--powered by robbery, drug-dealing, treachery, murder. Dimitrios murders to survive, to protect his identity, to topple governments, to safeguard a bank's investments. He's a monster for hire.

Latimer is tantalized, then fascinated, then obsessed. Off he goes to the far reaches of Europe, to follow the trail of Dimitrios's crimes, telling people he meets that he's doing research for a novel, but really, he's just eager to have a whiff of real evil.

What amazed me was this. A Coffin for Dimitrios was published in 1939--the year World War II began. It is a wise and intelligent warning on what lay ahead for Europe, traveling through countries we never think of and keeping company with people we are better off not knowing, showing the reader exactly what kind of corrupt, frightening, pitiless people were in power, the nature of the people who worked for them, and what ugly acts they were willing to commit in order to hold on to that power.

Here's the link to a much better review, by the incomparable Jeffrey Keeten: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
...more

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Dec 13, 2014 Ryan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Good:
So much tension! This is very well written and had me second guessing everyone. The settings are gorgeous, illustrating the magic and paranoia of interbellum Europe. And Mr Peters is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever read.

The Bad:
(view spoiler) The protagonist was also a bit dull, obviously written to appeal to the target audience of ...more

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Sep 21, 2020 Shirin Tondkar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: g-crime-thriller, own-fa

The first Eric Ambler book I read was a good experience. Charles Latimer is an English spy thriller writer because of his curiosity, struggled in the middle of a Spy Thriller himself try to chase an old criminal known as Dimitrios. Don't be so curious to make trouble.

''Don't try!''. ...more

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Jan 05, 2020 Patrick Sherriff rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-and-such

An excellent crime thriller from the 1930s. Better than Agatha Christie. My full review is here: patricksherriff.com/2020/01/06/the-ma... ...more

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Dec 31, 2007 Daniel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2008

One night, I went out with a friend, who also reads, and met up with some of his friends, most of whom also read. I sat across from this guy who worked at a local Barnes & Noble with my friend, and this guy and I started talking books. I mentioned that I had just read my first book by Alan Furst, and that I loved how he set an espionage story in Europe on the eve of World War II. I haven't read Furst, he said, but I really like Eric Ambler. Right there, that little literary alarm went off in my One night, I went out with a friend, who also reads, and met up with some of his friends, most of whom also read. I sat across from this guy who worked at a local Barnes & Noble with my friend, and this guy and I started talking books. I mentioned that I had just read my first book by Alan Furst, and that I loved how he set an espionage story in Europe on the eve of World War II. I haven't read Furst, he said, but I really like Eric Ambler. Right there, that little literary alarm went off in my head, and my nose tingled at the prospect of a new hunt. Who, I asked, leaning forward, is this Eric Ambler?

You know that I went on Amazon that night and looked up Ambler's entire bibliography in print; and you know, fellow Goodreader, that I looked him up on wikipedia and skimmed through his particulars. By the time I stepped away from the computer, I knew that I would be picking up a book by Ambler in the near future. (Such restraint: back then, if I saw a book was brand-spanking new, I held off and told myself to wait for a used copy; these days, I'm not so well-behaved--hence the massive to-read shelf looming over my shoulder like a troll with a law degree and a court summons...).

Eventually, I found a used Eric Ambler book, and that book was a paperback edition (different than what is pictured here, I just preferred to include my review with the lot of them) of "A Coffin for Dimitrios." Soon as I picked up that book and began reading it, I dove right in and lost myself in its dense network of treachery and cloak and dagger.

That friend of my friend was right: Eric Ambler writes a great espionage story set in Europe on the eve of World War II. And the big--no, humongous--difference between him any other writer who tries to do this today is that Eric Ambler was alive and writing in Europe on the eve of World War II. The man knows how to write a good story--and he had his fingers on Europe's erratic pulse in the late 1930s, when governments kept telling themselves and each other that they would never, ever commit the same sins that they had done a few decades before, while at the same time some of them braced themselves for the second coming of the war gods and their insatiable thirst. Meanwhile, people across the continent continued to travel between countries, wielding their passports and visas with casual aplomb; families spread out with the promise of seeing each other again; businesses connected with their clients across various borders; and the general mood on the continent waxed positive, as people recovered from the horror of mass warfare and picked up the efforts and dreams that their predecessors had carried into the early 20th century.

I am fascinated by this period of the 20C, and I relish any book that captures its mood and atmosphere. That Ambler not only does this, but also mixes in a complicated espionage story with believable characters who sweat and bleed and (probably) curse, makes his work a special favorite of mine. And in this book, Ambler is working at his very best. I could not consume it fast enough, and when I was done I felt like telling every person I knew to read this book. Read it now. See what life was like back then, and enjoy a helluva adventure while doing so.

Thank you Lawrence (should you ever come across this), for showing the way to Eric Ambler. ...more

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Apr 02, 2018 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: crime

'I am sorry,' said Latimer uncomfortably. 'The real reason why I want this information from you is so peculiar that I hesitated to give it.'

An excellent crime novel that well deserves its classic status.

Latimer is a mystery writer on holiday. He's supposed to be writing his next book--especially now that he doesn't have his Oxford salary to depend upon--but instead, he's treading water. He finds himself introduced to a Colonel Haki who has a mysteriously high and dangerous position with the 'I am sorry,' said Latimer uncomfortably. 'The real reason why I want this information from you is so peculiar that I hesitated to give it.'

An excellent crime novel that well deserves its classic status.

Latimer is a mystery writer on holiday. He's supposed to be writing his next book--especially now that he doesn't have his Oxford salary to depend upon--but instead, he's treading water. He finds himself introduced to a Colonel Haki who has a mysteriously high and dangerous position with the Turkish police and who has, of course, a slightly hackneyed plot he wants to pitch. ("He was always meeting people who felt they could write detective stories if they had the time.") More interesting to Latimer is the offer Colonel Haki impulsively extends to him: want to see the washed-up corpse of a sordid real-life criminal? I am obviously being invited to the wrong lunches with the wrong people, because they never end like this.

Dimitrios was a large-scale drug dealer, a pimp, and a murderer, utterly unlike the characters Latimer has been writing, situated in their orderly country houses. Without being able to explain why, Latimer becomes obsessed with learning more about Dimitrios and filling in the missing gaps of his biography, the times when his name changes or underground movements were so successful that the system lost track of him. This leads him on a journey across Europe as he does the legwork to piece together Dimitrios's life across borders and jurisdictions. Soon enough, unsurprisingly, this embroils him in peril and additional mystery.

Ambler is a smooth, nuanced, and often funny writer. He can take on with equal aplomb a long, chilling speech describing the slow descent into drug addiction and a tongue-in-cheek description of dangerous absurdity: "A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion." His depiction of the seamy criminal demimonde is realistic. It has intrigue but no glamour; it's full of self-aggrandizement and routine betrayal. Impressively, he makes Dimitrios a deadly and legendary figure without making him superhuman. He has "very brown, anxious eyes that make you think of a doctor's eyes when he is doing something to you that hurts." By the standards of the genre, he hardly even kills anyone, but Ambler is attentive to the trail of ruined lives he leaves behind him. The further Latimer delves into Dimitrios's life, the less Dimitrios fascinates him as an individual and the more he fascinates him as a symbol of the time (1939): "The logic of Michelangelo's David, Beethoven's quartets and Einstein's physics had been replaced by that of the Stock Exchange Yearbook and Hitler's Mein Kampf." Dimitrios is, more than anything else, a ruthless businessman. ...more

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Jul 20, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: spy-fiction

Charles Latimer, former lecture 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 ...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Tosh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

You can smell Orson Welles off the pages - or maybe it's Graham Greene? Nevetheless it's the start of the war years in Europe circ. late 1930's and there is the innocent bystander who is drawn into a world that he truly doesn't understand. In other words welcome to the world of Eric Amber.

The classic suspense writer and this is a great classic thriller. And back to Welles, it reminds me of The Third Man - not in plotting, but just the feel of dread in Europe at the time. But wait Third Man takes ...more

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Aug 08, 2016 Cphe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, mystery-thriller, historical-mystery-thriller, suspense, mystery, spy

Went into this mystery/thriller with certain expectations. I did enjoy the period and the setting of the novel but I did have an inkling early on how the mystery/thriller component would turn out. There weren't a lot of surprises in store.

My favourite characters were the shady Peters and Colonel Haki whose presence was quite minute unfortunately. Charles Latimer was a likeable enough main character but his presence was often overshadowed by the other characters. ...more

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May 11, 2011 Mark Van Aken Williams rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Not only is this novel THE masterpiece “thriller,” but it is THE original, departing from the crime fiction traditions of Doyle, Simenon, and Hammett. The dramatic value of adventure comes when the unadventurous man is inserted into the world of commerce and becomes involved in desperate matters through no fault of his own. It is not a world of good and evil. Ambler writes, “They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good business and Bad Business were the elements in the new theology. Dimitri ...more

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Feb 04, 2016 Lyn Elliott rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: thrillers, mystery

A good read. It's held up amazingly well, and though the locations deadly power games played by Dimitrios have shifted in today's world, you can't help recognise techniques for fomenting discord.
The central plot device (naive mystery writer sets out to satisfy curiosity) seems pretty shaky to me, and some of the tools used to advance the narrative are clunky (the letters that Latimer writes to the Turkish policeman to bring him up to date, for instance). I'm surprised I hadn't read it before, gl ...more

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Dec 06, 2018 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller, crime

Charles Latimer is a full-time writer of what we might now called 'cosies', detective novels set in English country houses and the like, with lurid titles such as A Bloody Shovel, Murder's Arms and No Doornail This. Having given up a post in academia to dedicate himself to his new métier he is travelling around Europe contemplating a new plot when he unexpectedly meets up with a fan in Istanbul.

It turns out Colonel Haki is a police inspector, who happens to mention that a body has just been retr Charles Latimer is a full-time writer of what we might now called 'cosies', detective novels set in English country houses and the like, with lurid titles such as A Bloody Shovel, Murder's Arms and No Doornail This. Having given up a post in academia to dedicate himself to his new métier he is travelling around Europe contemplating a new plot when he unexpectedly meets up with a fan in Istanbul.

It turns out Colonel Haki is a police inspector, who happens to mention that a body has just been retrieved from the Bosphorus, identified as a man called Dimitrios. Latimer is intrigued and, while surreptitiously investigating further, finds himself embroiled in a complex web of drug smuggling, human trafficking, political intrigue, financial corruption and murder. Too late he finds himself liable to become another murder victim as his amateur investigations take him around the Balkans and then back across the continent via Geneva to Paris.

Europe between the wars was volatile, to say the least. Whether on the margins -- in Turkey, say, or Bulgaria -- or nearer the west there was in the late 1930s an undercurrent of dark doings under the deceptively still surface of everyday affairs. That undertow had been evident for some time: in the third chapter, entitled 1922, Ambler actually gives a synopsis of the bloody events in Smyrna (modern Izmir) involving Turkish and Greek soldiers in massacres and reprisals. Out of this turmoil appeared the character known as Dimitrios. He left behind an interrupted trail of murder and assassination before the watery emergence of the body viewed by the Englishman on a Turkish mortuary slab in 1938. Latimer decides to try to fill in those gaps, seeking the dubious help of a Polish agent, a Danish colleague of Dimitrios and others whose affiliations should have put a more sensible man off the whole enterprise.

A mask is a disguise, a distraction, a simulacrum not to be trusted. Ambler is a thriller writer writing about Latimer, a crime novelist investigating Dimitrios, a man who invents multiple personalities for himself with surnames including Makropoulos, Talat and who knows what else. To this whiff of metafiction is added the fact that Ambler (according to Mark Mazower) had never visited Istanbul, gaining his background knowledge from Turkish émigrés in Nice. And while there is a sense of verisimilitude running right through this novel -- so much feels as if it reflects reality, as well it might since Ambler completed the novel as the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia -- there is the distinct feeling that Latimer would desperately like to retreat back into writing cosies about fictional murders.

Ambler, who knew his classical history, might have had in mind Demetrius of Macedon, known as a 'besieger of cities' and a monarch who enjoyed mixed success, rather like the Dimitrios of the the novel. Oddly, the US edition was entitled The Coffin of Dimitrios, which rather eschews the subtle ambiguity of the original title. I have to say I guessed the primary reveal well before the end (though other aspects of the denouement kept their surprises), meaning that I was aware early on of the significance of the masquerade: since a mask in Latin is persona, it wasn't hard to guess at the truth of the matter, that people -- alive or dead -- are not who they seem.

Given that the individuals are a generally unpleasant bunch Ambler's characterisations are quite believable, though Latimer's motivation in the face of likely mortal jeopardy is often opaque: would a rank amateur really put himself in danger so often? However, there is no doubt Ambler is a master of suspense, justifying the description of this as a thriller. Seedy cafés, isolated Swiss chalets, smoke-filled dives, cobbled Parisian streets at night, all inhabited by femmes fatales, criminals, double agents and an innocent abroad together suggest the uneasy calm before the storm that was to come. Small wonder then that the novel became an atmospheric film noir in 1944 with Peter Lorre as the protagonist (renamed Cornelius Leyden).

It's a tribute to the book's power that it still seems relevant today: as Mazower indicates in the introduction Latimer's instinct is "to see the criminal not as a man but as 'a unit in a disintegrating social system'" and yet we know that such individuals are the instigators, upholders and beneficiaries of that disintegration: 'The drug pedlar, the pimp, the thief, the spy, the white slaver, the bully, the financier'. And, one should add, the politician. It's a scary scenario, one that it's easy to suspect is playing out, right now, in the world. ...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Bev rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller, mystery

So...one of the things I know about myself is that I'm not a big thriller or spy novel fan. There have been exceptions over the years. For instance, I went through a tiny phase of reading James Bond books and I'm very fond of Pierce Brosnan as Bond in film (of course, I'm fond of Pierce Brosnan in just about anything). And I like the less serious Avengers with Steed and Emma Peel (television version, please). I love the Maltese Falcon with Bogart. In fact, you might say that I prefer my thriller So...one of the things I know about myself is that I'm not a big thriller or spy novel fan. There have been exceptions over the years. For instance, I went through a tiny phase of reading James Bond books and I'm very fond of Pierce Brosnan as Bond in film (of course, I'm fond of Pierce Brosnan in just about anything). And I like the less serious Avengers with Steed and Emma Peel (television version, please). I love the Maltese Falcon with Bogart. In fact, you might say that I prefer my thrillers and spy novels on screen rather than in print.

Which leads me to my point...A Coffin for Dimitrios doesn't read well for me. You'd think I'd love Eric Ambler's former academic, now mystery author protagonist. I'm big on mysteries with an academic connection of any sort. But, honestly, most of the book felt like a really long, dry lecture class. There was a lot of tell and very little show....In the second half of the book, we get several long stories from people who knew Dimitrios. They tell us all about what Dimitrios was like and what he did and how he made his money and swindled people or killed people or whatever--but very little action. Until the very end. Thrillers and spy novels, should, I think, by their nature be action stories. There should be a lot going on. Most of what we've got going on is people sitting around talking about Dimitrios.

Things start out in a very promising way. Charles Latimer, our academic turned author, is in Turkey. While there he meets a Turkish colonel who is a devoted reader of his mystery novels. Colonel Haki presents Latimer with a plot for a mystery novel and then asks him if he's interested in real murders. He goes on to share the story Dimitrios, a man said to be mixed up in everything from drug dealing to murder, spying to white slavery. Dimitrios's body has been found and lies waiting in the morgue. After going with the colonel to see the body, Latimer becomes unusually interested and decides to reconstruct the criminal's career. From there, you'd expect Latimer to get into all kinds of trouble while visiting various places where Dimitrios was known and have to get himself out of tight situations and well, you know, that a lot would happen. Exciting adventures. Thrilling stuff. Not as far as I could see.

I absolutely understand that this book is a big deal in the thriller/spy novel world. Ambler has often been credited with inventing the modern suspense novel. He is applauded for depicting the ordinary citizen pushed into intrigue and ill-prepared to handle it. He's known for his realism and for paving the way for Le Carre, Deighton and Ludlum. But I'm afraid that it just hasn't done that much for me. Your mileage may vary. Two and a half stars.

This was first posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks! ...more

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Jun 30, 2015 Skip rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller

I found this novel to be meandering, and it had too much first person narrative for my liking. A writer is taken to see the remains of Dimitrios, who has a checkered past. The writer then decides to look into his life, and discovers much more than is known by the police who found the body. I did not realize until reading the afterword that this book was written in the 1930s.

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Oct 01, 2016 Robert Kettering rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I give this one five stars because I've heard that it was the first of its kind (international espionage thriller) and because it was one of those books I hated to end. Eric Ambler was a first-writer...P.S. I prefer the title given to it in the UK, "Mask of Dimitrios", which I think was the also title of the Hollywood movie. ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Shobhit Sharad rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, mystery-and-thriller

Most of the crime/mystery books that I've read usually have a background of England. This book was an interesting tour of many countries, including Turkey and Greece and France. Eric Ambler very skilfully painted the pictures for the different countries, all the places and people are vividly clear and distinguishable in my mind.

Many detective authors try and make their stories sound realistic by saying things in their book like "If this was a book it would have been easy, but this is real life ...more

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May 05, 2010 FiveBooks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fivebooks-on-espionage

Bestselling spy novelist Charles Cumming has chosen to discuss A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Espionage, saying that:

"...Eric Ambler is the grandfather of the serious spy novel. Ambler was the same generation as Graham Greene, and he was, like a lot of educated people at that time, a kind of proto-Marxist, a socialist. He believed that he could use the thriller not only to entertain but also as a political tool, to say something abo ...more

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Never too Late to...: February 2021: A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler	42	31	Apr 18, 2021 02:09PM
Play Book Tag: Finished late Feb 28, but it's an other either way - A Coffin for Dimitrios, aka A Mask for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler 2 stars	3	9	Mar 01, 2021 12:53PM
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Guardian Newspape...: Mask Of Dimitrios, The - April 2018	22	26	Aug 17, 2019 06:08PM

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About Eric Ambler

Eric Ambler

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Eric Ambler began his writing career in the early 1930s, and quickly established a reputation as a thriller writer of extraordinary depth and originality. He is often credited as the inventor of the modern political thriller and John Le Carre once described him as 'the source on which we all draw.'

Ambler began his working life at an engineering firm, then as a copywriter at an advertising agency, ...more

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“Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.” — 18 likes

“In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.” — 11 likes

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