Eric Ambler’s The Light of Day was originally published in 1962 and then turned into the film Topkapi in 1964 by American film director Jules Dassin. The novel was received with rave reviews and helped cement Ambler as one of the creators of the modern suspense novel. With an international flare (which was also present…
It’s the 1960’s, and as the James Bond franchise is in the midst of exploding onto the scene, the author and creator of 007, Ian Fleming, dies on August 12, 1964. While Goldfinger (1964), the third Bond film drawn from Fleming’s novels about the British secret agent with a license to kill, would be released…
For novelists, the Second World War is a canvas with the primary colors already filled in — a conflict of cataclysmic proportion that changed not only the map of the world, but reached deep inside the souls of nations. Moreover, it's the last major conflict in which writers feel comfortable embracing one side without reservation,…
Let’s face it. When you think of sociable people, the fictional private eye is not the person you think of first. PIs are supposed to be loners. The TV PI will tell you he is a loner, but then every week you meet another old close friend now in trouble. He spends quality time every…
Over at the endlessly fascinating Letters of Note, they have a telegram from Ian Fleming to Eric Ambler, asking Ambler to see whether his friend Alfred Hitchcock might be interested in directing the first Bond flick. Hitch was busy with Psycho, so the answer was no, but isn’t it something to imagine? You can read…
