Eric Ambler. Cause for Alarm. 1938.

Protospynovel.

At the top of page 90 it happens:

“May I be Frank, Mr. Marlow?”

And I am hooked. At any point up until page 83 I could have put down the book and walked away with neither regret nor memories of what had transpired up until that point. If there is a tangible explanation for how a series of words can coelesce into a more or less compelling narrative that races ahead of itself in the imagination of anticipation, I'm sure a more astute reader than I would have formulated it. To put it another way, how is it possible that the reader, who has been inert and in a state of physical rest for more than one hour, might suddenly experience an acceleration in heart rate as a result of symbols on a page representing explicitly ficticious events? What biological basis can there be for such a reaction?

In the case of page 90 I think it is the vivid characterization of Vagas, encoded in the text was something I was capable of imagining. We can imagine him as concentric rings which are penetrated in succession as the main character spends more time with him. The word preremptory signals the second ring.

This book, Eric Ambler's second novel, is actually Eric Ambler's first novel. The main difference is that this book is in the first instead of third person. The similarities: in the years prior to World War II, a broke English-speaking man, acting out of financial desparation, accepts a job that inadvertently involves him in international intrigue, is blamed for a crime, has his picture in the papers, befriends a pair of Russian agents, one male and one female, develops an adversarial relationship with an absurdly sharp-dressed man with an accent, and must escape across the border between two central European nations by taking a train to a border region and setting out at night on foot.