A KIND OF ANGER

A Kind of Anger, Eric Ambler, Atheneum, 1964, 311 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: Six weeks ago, Lucia Bernardi fled the Swiss villa where her lover was murdered—and then she vanished. No one can find her: Not the police, who want her for murder; not the tabloids, who want her for her story; nor the real killers, who desperately want the papers she spirited away from the scene of the crime. Disgraced reporter Piet Maas stumbles upon Lucia, in hiding in the south of France. There he must decide whether to publish her story—reviving his career but guaranteeing her death—or to join in her perilous extortion scheme, and risk both their lives for the promise of profit.

 

 

My Review:

This is the third Eric Ambler espionage thriller I have read. It was the best of three. I like Ambler because he is less dour than Le Carre, less trashy than Ian Fleming, and less serious than Graham Greene. His stories fall a bit outside the usual Cold War plots.

 

Although the book is over 50 years old, it has some chilling similarities to current times. No social media but the tabloids complicate the plot. A Kurdish revolutionary scheme with connections to oil magnates. A protagonist whose failed literary journal haunts him.

 

Lucia as the femme fatale is smart and operates in a moral gray area. Can she and her sympathetic journalist pull off their extortion caper and cause competing political zealots to lose on both sides?

 

Good stuff!