Eric Ambler. Background to Danger. 1936.

Protospynovel.

I was driving to the Shawnee National Forest and Garrison Keillor, in his lit lite NPR spot, said that Eric Ambler was the first spy novelist. A few weeks and one dollar later, I read this book, the first spy novel (but what about Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent?). This novel advances the thesis that international politics, including war, is a side-effect of the schemes of big business–the most significant force shaping human events. Strange that, despite all the tumultuous events since 1936, this idea is still credible. Also strange that the protospynovelist, who instigated an entire genre of aesethetically conservative commercial literature, should seem so left-leaning. Come to think of it, its also strange that the protodetective novelist Dashiell Hammett should seem so left-leaning. Strange also that the protoscifinovelist H.G. Wells should seem so left-leaning. Does the literary establishment invent genres to put these people in purely to discredit their dangerously socialist ideas?

This book is thrilling, palatable, but at its clunkiest when trying to describe spacial relations during the many chase and escape scenes. These scenes are still exciting, even if it is baffling trying to picture what is happening in them. Still, it is worth a dollar, and is probably better than Tom Clancy. Not that I will ever know.