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.
About the author: Eric Ambler (1909-98) was one of the most fascinating
British writers of the late 1930s. His novels retain a remarkable sense
of the dread and terror that filled Europe as world war broke out. Some
were made into films (not least Orson Welles' superb version of Journey
into Fear), all were best sellers, inventing a new, more realistic form
of spy novel, where the main protagonist is not so much a hero as a
victim, pursued by malevolent Fascist forces of overwhelming power.
These are paranoid stories, but written at a time when paranoia was
disturbingly close to common sense.
