Eric Ambler

It is 1940 and Mr Graham, a quietly-spoken engineer and arms expert, has just finished high-level talks with the Turkish government. And now somebody wants him dead. The previous night three shots were fired at him as he stepped into his hotel room, so, terrified, he escapes in secret on a passenger steamer from Istanbul. As he journeys home - alongside, among others, an entrancing French dancer, an unkempt trader, a mysterious German doctor and a small, brutal man in a crumpled suit - he enters a nightmarish world where friend and foe are indistinguishable. Graham can try to run, but he may not be able to hide for much longer ...

Discover the new Penguin Crime and Espionage seriesA crime novelist has found the perfect subject - but it may cost him his lifeEnglish writer Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when a police inspector tells him about the infamous master criminal Dimitrios, long wanted by the law, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Immediately fascinated, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios' steps across Europe to gather material for a new book, but instead finds himself descending into a terrifying underworld of international espionage, Balkan drug dealers, unscrupulous businessmen and fatal treachery - one he may not be able to escape.

'The new crime and espionage series from Penguin Classics makes for a mouth-watering prospect' Daily Telegraph1940. An unassuming English engineer has travelled to Turkey on business. And somebody wants him dead.It all began when Graham was taken to a nightclub in Istanbul and noticed a man in a crumpled suit, watching him. Then he narrowly missed being killed by gunfire on returning to his hotel room. Now, terrified, he has been helped to escape in secret on a passenger steamer home. But although Graham may try to run, he cannot hide from his pursuers forever, and soon he is caught up in a nightmare beyond his control.

'He took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul, where it all really happened' Frederick ForsythSmall-time hustler Arthur Abdel Simpson ekes out a living in Athens by robbing gullible tourists. But when an attempted theft backfires, he finds himself out-smarted and blackmailed into driving a highly suspicious car across the border to Istanbul. Then the Turkish secret police get involved, and Simpson becomes embroiled in something far deeper, and more dangerous, than he could imagine. Featuring a heart-stopping jewel heist, this compulsive, morally complex thriller became the basis for the classic film Topkapi.

'The man who lit the way for us all' Len DeightonAn Indian clerk, Girija Krishnan, sees the opportunity of his lifetime when he stumbles on an abandoned cache of arms hidden in the Malayan jungle. If he can sell the weapons, he will be able to achieve his lifelong dream of owning a bus company - although the penalty for gun-running is death. Soon his decision becomes the catalyst for a chain of events involving an entrepreneurial Chinese family, a corrupt Colonel and, finally, a naïve couple of American tourists who find themselves horribly out of their depth.

'A thriller of the highest quality - ironic, witty, literate, ingenious, understated and unflaggingly suspenseful' The New York Times Book ReviewThe last time anyone saw Lucia Bernardi, she was driving at top speed away from a Swiss villa - leaving the body of her murdered Iraqi lover behind. Now she has vanished, along with a potentially explosive set of papers, and disgraced journalist Piet Maas has been sent to follow her trail to the South of France. But finding her is just the start of his problems. Soon, amid a cast of con men, secret agents and revolutionaries, he must decide whether to land the scoop of his lifetime - or follow Lucia into ever more dangerous waters.

The Dark Frontier launched Eric Ambler's five-decade career as one of the most influential thriller writers of our time. England, 1935. Physicist Henry Barstow is on holiday when he meets the mysterious Simon Groom, a representative for an armaments manufacturer. Groom invites the professor to Ixania, a small nation-state in Eastern Europe whose growing weapons program threatens to destabilize the region. Only after suffering a blow to the head--which muddles his brain into believing he is Conway Carruthers, international spy--does the mild-mannered physicist agree to visit Ixania. But he quickly recognizes that Groom has a more sinister agenda, and Carruthers is the only man who can stop him.

Winner of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award Syria, 1970. Michael Howell has kept his family's Middle Eastern business enterprises going through a decade of takeovers, war, and revolution, thanks in part to his office manager, Teresa, who is also his mistress. One late night at the office, they discover men working overtime--producing unauthorized bombs for the Palestine Action Force. Worse, this guerrilla terrorist group is not deterred by their discovery--rather, they will enlist Howell and Teresa's unwilling help in carrying out their plan.

A blanket of fog grounds a flight in Brussels and Dr. Andrew Maclaren finds himself sharing a room with a fellow passenger who by morning disappears in suspicious circumstances, leaving behind an envelope hidden under the carpet. Whilst the contents are seemingly innocent, they lead the young Doctor into nightmarish adventures, culminating in the avoidance of cold-blooded killers in a deserted windmill and in the company of a beautiful redhead.

Charles Burton, journalist, cannot get his work past the Iron Curtain censors and knows he should leave the country. However, he is in love with his secretary, Anna Maras, and she is in danger. Then the president is assassinated and one of Burton's office workers is found dead. He decides to smuggle Anna out of the country, but her reluctance impedes him, as does being sought by secret police and counter-revolutionaries alike.