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 Eric Clifford Ambler was a British author of crime and thriller novels who lived in the 1900s.
Ambler was born on 28 June 1909 in London, United Kingdom, and spent his early years helping with the puppet show his family ran. He was born into a family of entertainers, which would later prove very influential in his choice of career, and both his parents worked as music hall artists.
He was educated at Northampton Polytechnic in Islington (later renamed City University, London) where he studied engineering. Despite serving an apprenticeship with an engineering company, Ambler chose rather to pursue a career in writing and began producing plays and various other works.
He worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency in London for a time during the late 1930s before relocating to Paris, where he met Louise Crombie, who he later married.
Ambler enlisted in the army when World War II broke out and in 1941 was commissioned into the Royal Artillery. Realising his talents would be put to better use elsewhere, he was soon reassigned to the photographic unit. He ended the war as a Lieutenant-Colonel and assistant director of the army film unit.
He worked as a screenwriter after the war and received an Academy Award nomination for his work on the adaptation of Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea in 1953.
In 1958 Ambler divorced Crombie. That same year he married film producer and screenwriter Joan Harrison.
Probably his best-known works are The Mask of Dimitrios (1939) (originally published as A Coffin for Dimitrios), which was adapted for film in 1944, and The Light of Day (1962).
Several of Ambler’s novels explore the same theme; an amateur who unwillingly finds himself among hardened criminals and spies and, naturally out of his depth, comes across as somewhat of an anti-hero. However, the protagonist eventually manages to surprise himself and the professionals with some decisive action that leads to his having the upper hand against his opponents.
Journey Into Fear (1942), The Light of Day (1962) and Dirty Story (1967) are examples of novels that make use of this plot.
Ambler also co-wrote several books with Charles Rodda. These books were written under the pseudonym Eliot Reed.
Ambler died in 1998, at the age of 89, in Switzerland. [edit]
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