Waiting for Orders
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
Waiting for Orders collects nine short stories that span the sixty-year career of master spy novelist Eric Ambler. The stories include thrilling portrayals of wartime Europe in “The Army of the Shadows” (1939); six cases featuring a refugee Czech detective, Dr. Czissar (1940); “The Blood Bargain” (1972), a Central American political thriller; and “The One Who Did for Blagden Cole” (1992), a detective story of sorts about the death of a painter. In four accompanying essays, Ambler shares intriguing anecdotes from different phases of his career, offering unique insight into his writing process. This intriguing and varied collection is a perfect introduction to the life and writing of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thriller writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Most of these eight mildly diverting short stories disinterred from the work of British suspense master Ambler were written in 1939-1940 as Ambler, already a successful novelist ( A Coffin for Dimitrios ), awaited his call to military duty. Six ingenious detective short-shorts star a heel-clicking, umbrella-toting refugee (``Dr. Jan Czissar. Late Prague police. At your service'') who infuriates the outclassed Mercer of Scotland Yard by being insufferably and invariably correct. In a preface, Ambler relates that the ideas for these tales came from a standard two-volume work on forensic medicine. Two suspense stories, however, beg for further development. In ``The Army of the Shadows'' an English surgeon driving in the Swiss Alps becomes stranded during a snow storm and then entangled in the intrigues of prewar anti-Nazis. Here Ambler expressed the soon-to-be-unpopular view that the enemy was not the German people but the Nazi tyranny. In ``The Blood Bargain,'' salvaged from a failed novel, a corrupt Latin American tyrant uses subtle psychological tactics to gain his release from insurgents, then finds exile extremely dangerous.
