Epitaph for a Spy

I was aware that Eric Ambler was an author of thrillers, but somehow I totally missed that he wrote spy novels. As it turns out, he not only did but it even was him and not, as I’d always assumed, John le Carré who first injected literary ambitions into the genre, and all later authors then built on his efforts.

Having said that, Epitaph for a Spy is quite different from anything Le Carré (really the only author of spy novels I have read so far) was to do later: Ambler’s protagonist, Josef Vassady, is not a professional spy but gets involved in espionage through a mixture of accident and blackmail. And the reader soon (rather sooner than Vassaly himself) finds at that he is really, really bad at it – he does try hard, but bungles show more one amateurish attempt after the other. His task (or what he assumes to be his task) is to ferret out a spy among the handful of residents of a small hotel in a French seaside resort and as our protagonist conceives and spectacularly fails to execute one hare-brained scheme after another, quite a bit of hilarity ensues.

Epitaph for a Spy is mainly a comedy which draws its humour chiefly from the way Vassady attempts to apply plans he seems to not so much have come up with himself but snatched from a variety of James-Bond-like spy novels to what is at hear a realistic setting. Obviously (obviously, that is, for everyone buy Vassaly) this can`t work, and doesn’t and ends up being quite funny. We’re dealing with a parody of the spy novel genre then, and Ambler ridicules it by repeatedly showing how none of the common clichés of that genre would hold up if anyone actually tried them out.

But while the parody unfolds, it turns out that none of the hotel’s guest, who seemed a bit bizarre but overall quite charming, is quite what they claimed to be, that in fact some of them are quite sinister figures and as the novel progresses its canny humour takes on an increasingly creepy undertone.
The novel was first published in 1938 and Ambler obviously was very aware of what was going on politically at the time and very critical from what is clearly a very left-wing perspective. The introduction of my edition is quick to emphasise how he was not a communist, but that is pretty much a mandatory disclaimer (see most of the introductions to the novels by Sjöwall/Wahlöö) and personally I am inclined to think Ambler’s astonishing clearsightedness owes rather a lot to his political leanings.

However that may be, the longer the novel progresses, the more the political situation keeps seeping into its atmosphere which grows increasingly menacing even as the narrative retains its comical aspects. But even as the Vassady continues his bumbling Ambler raises the reader’s awareness that the novel’s protagonist does not act out of his own volition but is forced into playing a spy and that his situation is becoming more and more desperate as his target keeps eluding him. And we also learn some of the resort guests’ background stories some of which are also quite grim. And there is a twist at the end which come almost as an aside and is not even part of the main plot which is quite chilling and ends the novel on a very bleak outlook for the future. And I think it is precisely this balancing act between the comical and the menacing which makes Epitaph for a Spy remarkable – Ambler handles this very deftly and uses the increasing tension between those two elements to both drive his plot and create a unique atmosphere for his novel. show less

It's hard not to feel sorry for the hapless Vadassy, roped into a plot, forced to hunt for a spy, a task for which he is woefully unprepared and which he goes about with a bumbling desperation. This is the anthisesis of one of those books where a clever slueth probes the doings and stories of a series of characters all confined to a single location, eventually, putting the clues together and seeing through the deceptions to finally reveal the culprit. Poor Vadassy acts in a way that probably more closely resembles how the rest of us would act in that situation, completely out of our depth. In the end, the hidden world of espionage and intrigue are larger and nastier than he could ever have imagined.

Meet Josef Vadassy. He was born in Hungary but after the last changes in Europe, his birth place is now part of Yugoslavia. Hungary refuses to issue him a passport (as he is not really Hungarian); Yugoslavia will not renew his expired one (this unfortunate circumstance has a lot to do with his family getting into troubles and being shot). So as a man of no land, he is trying to live in Europe - and at the time the novel opens, he had found himself a place as a teacher of languages in Paris. Except that it is the vacation so he is away from the capital - in Nice and Toulon. His most prized possession is a camera and when he arrives in the nice cozy hotel where he had decided to spend the last few days of his vacation, he brings his film show more to be developed at the chemist. And suddenly he is arrested for espionage - because of some pictures on his film - pictures he knows he had not made. The police gives him a choice and a few hours later, our hero is back at the hotel, trying to help the police to figure out how the pictures ended up on his film.

And this is where the fun begins. Knowing that he is innocent but never done any detecting before (or even thought of doing it), Vadassy makes a mistake after a mistake and manages to walk from one comical situation into another - mainly because he does not understand why the police asks him to do some things and decides to be... creative. Somewhere along the lines, he gets attacked, a lot of people tell him their life stories and the reality of the pre-war Europe is starting to show up. This is where Ambler's strong suit is - he is a keen observer of the times and a lot of what he predicts in his novels actually happens in a few years. "Epitaph for a Spy" does not have as many observations on the state of affairs as "The Mask of Dimitrios" but considering that it is written before 1939, some of these observations are chilling. And the people that are staying at the hotel cannot be more different from each other - an English couple, American brother and sister, a Swiss Family, a German man and a few French guys (we are in France after all). Slowly, very slowly, secrets start getting revealed and the real stories start emerging. Our poor Vadassy start getting more and more confused - and this leads to even more interesting situations.

The book is amusing and a spy is involved (so it is technically a spy book) - in a way the spy is a main character. But it is mainly about a man that has nothing left being faced with the possibility to be thrown in jail for something he had not done... and deciding to do anything needed to make sure that this does not happen. At the end of the novel, when the police puts their cards on the table, the whole story becomes even funnier - because Ambler had played masterfully on misunderstandings that lead to unexpected results and acts based on the partial information that a character had at the time. show less

I have a fondness for this sub-genre of spy novels - the type in which an innocent person gets caught up in some way with espionage and tries to muddle things out while unsure whom to trust. Ambler is one of the creators (if not the creator) of this sub-genre & the excellence of his books is witnessed by the number of authors who have followed in his footsteps.

This novel, though published in the 1950s, is set during the 1930s. Thus tensions are high in Europe & an accusation of espionage is no light matter, especially for state-less Josef Vadassy with no embassy or consul to act on his behalf. One aspect I liked about this book is that while Vadassy tries to comply with the instructions he has been given by French Naval Intelligence, show more since it is his only hope of escape out this tangle, he is hopelessly inept at it! And he realizes that... show less

Not a fun spy thriller cos Vadassy is quite a bumbling spy catcher. Can't blame him since he is an amateur. But what is interesting is the book's depiction of human nature. Vadassy received instructions from Beghin but he didn't carry them out to the T, thinking that they would alert the spy. However, this is precisely what Beghin wanted! But Vadassy didn't know Beghin's real intentions so he couldn't be blamed.

I don't know if I was just in the wrong mood, but I did not think this book lived up to expectations. I'm told it's considered one of Ambler's best; I found it rather boring. Ambler's debt to Agatha Christie has surely been commented upon before, and I felt it most strongly in this novel. Ambler, however, lacks her genius for characterization.

Ambler is a master of the spy novel, even arguably it's originator. Not as notable a success as his iconic "A Coffin for Demetrios," in this book Ambler still delivers a thrilling "wrongly-suspected man" story (a favorite sub-genre of mine!) in a very spare less-than-300 pages. Unlike so many over long, current-day works that desperately need an editor with a few sharp red pencils, Ambler tells here a remarkably exciting, deeply atmospheric and engaging story without a lot of filler. It's very evocative of Alan Furst's best work; I suspect Furst must consider Ambler an influence.