The Dark Frontier
OCLC 809179463 | | |
Followed by | Uncommon Danger |
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The Dark Frontier (1936) is
Background
He wrote about its genesis thus:"... Became press agent for film star, but soon after joined big London advertising agency as
Plot
The novel is set in 1934 or 1935 in
Two groups of people want to prevent exactly that. There is Simon Groom, a representative of Messrs. Cator & Bliss Ltd., a British armament manufacturer, who is sent to Ixania to get hold of the Kassen secret by hook or by crook. He enlists the services of Professor Henry Barstow, an English physicist who is to travel with him to Ixania to determine whether the secret papers whose theft he plans to commission are authentic and worth the money.
However, Henry Barstow seems to be a cover name for Conway Carruthers, a
Siding with the peasant revolutionaries, Carruthers becomes the leader of the operation and thus the de facto leader of the peasants. On several occasions his and Casey's lives are in danger, repeatedly they are "standing in front of the wrong end of a gun", but it is always Carruthers's almost superhuman intelligence and skills that save them. Within only one day it turns out that, with the old government having stepped down, the revolution has been both successful and unbloody. Kassen is dead, and all copies of his secret except one have been destroyed. The one copy that has survived is Countess Schverzinski's, and she is driving her Mercedes at breakneck speed along a dark and narrow mountain road, with the only intention of fleeing the country. However, Carruthers and Casey are following her in Groom's car (which they have stolen), but before they can catch up with her and stop her vehicle she has an accident, is catapulted out of her car, and dies. The wreck of her Mercedes catches fire, so all Carruthers has to do when he arrives at the scene is retrieve the last remaining copy of the bomb-building manual from the Countess's body and cast it into the flames.
Reception
The novel was one of the first six of Ambler's books which made his name. Ambler wrote in his autobiography, "As I saw it, the thriller had nowhere to go but up".[4]
The Dark Frontier parodies the conventions of the contemporary British thriller,[2][5] particularly E. Phillips Oppenheim and John Buchan,[6] but improves upon them.[7]
See also
References
- ^ Caterson, Simon (2000). "Eric Ambler's dark frontiers". Quadrant. 44 (1–2): 87–88.
- ^ a b "Obituary: Eric Ambler". The Independent. 23 October 1998. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- .
- ^ Pace, Eric (24 October 1998). "Eric Ambler, Thriller Writer Who Elevated the Genre to Literature, Is Dead at 89". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ "Ambler's own story intriguing". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Busch, Frederick (8 April 1990). "Eric Ambler's first novel, reissued". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Jones, Thomas (5 June 2009). "Thomas Jones on thriller writer Eric Ambler". the Guardian. Retrieved 1 September 2022.