PASSAGE OF ARMS (246 pp.)—Eric Ambler—Knopf ($3.95). The typical Eric Ambler reader—a man who, in his own fancy, wears a belted raincoat and knows an automatic from a revolver—places himself in the ...

In A Coffin For Dimitrios, published in 1939, the city is Istanbul between the world wars, and the hero is a writer intrigued by a newly dead Greek criminal whose life story leads him deep into the ...

Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of thrillers, in particular spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. He also worked as a screenwriter.