Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Harmondsworth ; New York, 1945.reprinted 1947 and 1961
Description
Nicky Marlow needs a job. He’s engaged to be married and the employment market is pretty slim in Britain in 1937. So when his fiancé points out the Spartacus Machine Tool notice, he jumps at the chance. After all, he speaks Italian and he figures he’ll be able to endure Milan for a year, long enough to save some money. Soon after he arrives, however, he learns the sinister truth of his predecessor’s death and finds himself courted by two agents with dangerously different agendas. In the process, Marlow realizes it’s not so simple to just do the job he’s paid to do in fascist Italy on the eve of a world war.
User reviews
LibraryThing member uvula_fr_b4
One of Eric Ambler's typical stories of an ordinary man plunked down into espionage circumstances, Cause For Alarm relates how a down-on-his luck English engineer named Nick Marlow, who has a promising young surgeon fiancee named Claire, takes a somewhat seedy job as a Wolverhampton firm's Milan
While Cause For Alarm is a swift, entertaining read that one can readily imagine as a classic "B"-list thriller from the early 1940s, it never really keeps one in a cold grip of suspense; this is largely due, I think, to the first person narration of Marlow, which evokes John Buchan's Richard Hannay novels (The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, etc.) more than it does one of Graham Greene's machine-tooled thrillers of the era or Ambler's own A Coffin for Dimitrios. While things get far more sticky for Marlow than most people, including this reviewer, would like to personally experience, one never feels the sense of existential dread that one can in the novels of Greene, or of Ambler's modern heir, Alan Furst.
Then too, Cause For Alarm in many places reads more like a film treatment than a proper suspenser, particularly in the semi-amusing banter between the male and female characters and the semi-serious bickering between Marlow and Zaleshoff. A modern reader might well be suspicious of the casual generalizations of various nationalities and weary of the use of effeminacy-cum-homosexuality as shorthand descriptions of villainy; an American reader will likely grimace at the missteps that Ambler makes in the speech of his American character, but this is a failing common to many British writers, even very good ones (viz. Alan Moore having Richard Nixon declare, "I will not be pressurized!" instead of "I will not be pressured!" in Watchmen). And I suppose Americans have to gamely endure the latter as just desserts for generations of American writers over-doing the "pip-pip," "jolly good show," "what-what" tics of their British characters.
Despite my reservations, which are really cavils, Cause For Alarm is a good soft-boiled thriller with an underlying serious message that must have been uncomfortably timely for many readers when it was first published in 1939 (and is not any less relevant today...); its scope is plausible enough to read like a "now it can be told" account underlying a relatively minor news event such as one might hear on BBC Radio 4, and its conclusion is both plausible and pointed enough to make a modern reader nod his head and mutter, "Ah-hah..."
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representative; as it is the late 1930s, this means that Marlow has to deal with the "joys" of Mussolini's Fascist regime and the Ovra (Organizzazione Vigilanza Repressione Anti-fascismo: "vigilant organization for the repression of anti-fascism...secret police; the Italian counterpart of the Nazi Gestapo" [p. 94], comprised largely of former Mafioisi) as well as slightly unusual twists in the normal Italian business practices of bribery to secure contracts. Marlow befriends a professed American expat named Zaleshoff and a sinister lover of the ballet named General Vagas, a "Yugo-slav," as rendered here. While Cause For Alarm is a swift, entertaining read that one can readily imagine as a classic "B"-list thriller from the early 1940s, it never really keeps one in a cold grip of suspense; this is largely due, I think, to the first person narration of Marlow, which evokes John Buchan's Richard Hannay novels (The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, etc.) more than it does one of Graham Greene's machine-tooled thrillers of the era or Ambler's own A Coffin for Dimitrios. While things get far more sticky for Marlow than most people, including this reviewer, would like to personally experience, one never feels the sense of existential dread that one can in the novels of Greene, or of Ambler's modern heir, Alan Furst.
Then too, Cause For Alarm in many places reads more like a film treatment than a proper suspenser, particularly in the semi-amusing banter between the male and female characters and the semi-serious bickering between Marlow and Zaleshoff. A modern reader might well be suspicious of the casual generalizations of various nationalities and weary of the use of effeminacy-cum-homosexuality as shorthand descriptions of villainy; an American reader will likely grimace at the missteps that Ambler makes in the speech of his American character, but this is a failing common to many British writers, even very good ones (viz. Alan Moore having Richard Nixon declare, "I will not be pressurized!" instead of "I will not be pressured!" in Watchmen). And I suppose Americans have to gamely endure the latter as just desserts for generations of American writers over-doing the "pip-pip," "jolly good show," "what-what" tics of their British characters.
Despite my reservations, which are really cavils, Cause For Alarm is a good soft-boiled thriller with an underlying serious message that must have been uncomfortably timely for many readers when it was first published in 1939 (and is not any less relevant today...); its scope is plausible enough to read like a "now it can be told" account underlying a relatively minor news event such as one might hear on BBC Radio 4, and its conclusion is both plausible and pointed enough to make a modern reader nod his head and mutter, "Ah-hah..."
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LibraryThing member pgmcc
The fact that I read Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler in less than three days indicates my enjoyment of it. It was first published in 1938 and is set in Italy. Mussolini is in power and the country is building its armaments. Italy has an alignment with Nazis Germany and the rest of Europe is
Naturally, Marlow, an engineer recently made redundant by the closure of his former employer, is new to the world of sales and is unaccustomed to the prevailing habits and practices of business in Italy. This innocent becomes embroiled in matters of corruption and international espionage.
I find the stories from the years between WWI and WWII very interesting. They give a picture of what was happening in Europe in the years before WWII. People are aware of the horrors of WWI and are pre-occupied by the risk of a future war.
Both Graham Greene and John Le Carré said they had been inspired by Eric Ambler's works, and I can see why.
Will I read more works by Eric Ambler?
Most definitely.
Would I recommend this book to others?
Yes.
To whom would I recommend?
Anyone who likes espionage adventure stories. If you like the atmosphere present in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, also released in 1938, or Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, chances are you will like this.
Fans of Graham Greene's work and the stories of John Le Carré should find Ambler's works interesting, albeit slightly less complex than today's tales of espionage.
"The only difference between our obsessions and Beronelli’s is that we share ours with the other citizens of Europe. We’re still listening sympathetically to guys telling us that you can only secure peace and justice with war and injustice, that the patch of earth on which one nation lives is mystically superior to the patch their neighbours live on, that a man who uses a different set of noises to praise God is your natural born enemy. We escape into lies. We don’t even bother to make them good lies. If you say a thing often enough, if you like to believe it, it must be true. That’s the way it works. No need for thinking. Let’s follow our bellies. Down with intelligence. You can’t change human nature, buddy." (from "Cause for Alarm (1938)" by Eric Ambler)
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aprehensive about the Rome-Berlin Axis. Nicholas Marlow takes the job as Italian representative for an English machine manufacturer that supplies equipment for the production of large bore shells. You might say business is booming.Naturally, Marlow, an engineer recently made redundant by the closure of his former employer, is new to the world of sales and is unaccustomed to the prevailing habits and practices of business in Italy. This innocent becomes embroiled in matters of corruption and international espionage.
I find the stories from the years between WWI and WWII very interesting. They give a picture of what was happening in Europe in the years before WWII. People are aware of the horrors of WWI and are pre-occupied by the risk of a future war.
Both Graham Greene and John Le Carré said they had been inspired by Eric Ambler's works, and I can see why.
Will I read more works by Eric Ambler?
Most definitely.
Would I recommend this book to others?
Yes.
To whom would I recommend?
Anyone who likes espionage adventure stories. If you like the atmosphere present in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, also released in 1938, or Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, chances are you will like this.
Fans of Graham Greene's work and the stories of John Le Carré should find Ambler's works interesting, albeit slightly less complex than today's tales of espionage.
"The only difference between our obsessions and Beronelli’s is that we share ours with the other citizens of Europe. We’re still listening sympathetically to guys telling us that you can only secure peace and justice with war and injustice, that the patch of earth on which one nation lives is mystically superior to the patch their neighbours live on, that a man who uses a different set of noises to praise God is your natural born enemy. We escape into lies. We don’t even bother to make them good lies. If you say a thing often enough, if you like to believe it, it must be true. That’s the way it works. No need for thinking. Let’s follow our bellies. Down with intelligence. You can’t change human nature, buddy." (from "Cause for Alarm (1938)" by Eric Ambler)
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LibraryThing member TedWitham
A strong and surprisingly modern spy story. An engineer finds a job representing a British firm in Milan in the late thirties. He becomes more and more caught up in the world of espionage. A decent but naive man, he muddles through and survives.
An enjoyable read.
An enjoyable read.
LibraryThing member edwinbcn
Published in 1938, this political spy novel can still entice the modern reader with a fast-speed, racy story. Surely, some of it seems dated, murder in an alley of long shadows, but this is only because we have seen to many movies from or about the same period. Retrospectively, we can see how well
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Eric Ambler caught the spirit of the day, with rising fascism in Italy. I am sure that, as more fiction from the 1930s comes into the public domain, or is re-issued, as this edition is in Penguin Modern Classics, and we will read more fiction from that period, we will have to re-evaluate the view that people did not see fascism coming. Show Less
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
Cause For Alarm by Eric Ambler is a classic spy thriller that is set in Fascist Italy in 1938. A tale of espionage and counter-espionage, this was an enjoyable read about the political situation that was building up to soon become open warfare. Eric Ambler wrote the book in the late 1930’s and
Unlike the thrillers of today, I found that the story developed quite slowly. Nick Marlow finds himself out of work and accepts a job with an engineering company to run their Milan office unaware that he will soon be involved in cloak and dagger intrigue. Becoming involved with Russian agents, German spies and suspicious Italian organizations, he soon finds himself on the run across Northern Italy toward the border with Yugoslavia.
I found Cause For Alarm to be a well-written, subtle yet intelligent story. The author’s straight forward narration gives just enough color to the story for the reader to see the desperation and confusion of the amateur caught up in an impossible situation. The author’s leftist leanings are obvious with his sympathetic take on a couple of Russian spies, but of course, this book was written before Germany and Russia signed their Non-Aggression Pact. An interesting look at Europe on the brink of war.
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clearly saw the danger in both the Nazi government of Germany and the rise of Fascism in Italy.Unlike the thrillers of today, I found that the story developed quite slowly. Nick Marlow finds himself out of work and accepts a job with an engineering company to run their Milan office unaware that he will soon be involved in cloak and dagger intrigue. Becoming involved with Russian agents, German spies and suspicious Italian organizations, he soon finds himself on the run across Northern Italy toward the border with Yugoslavia.
I found Cause For Alarm to be a well-written, subtle yet intelligent story. The author’s straight forward narration gives just enough color to the story for the reader to see the desperation and confusion of the amateur caught up in an impossible situation. The author’s leftist leanings are obvious with his sympathetic take on a couple of Russian spies, but of course, this book was written before Germany and Russia signed their Non-Aggression Pact. An interesting look at Europe on the brink of war.
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LibraryThing member JackMassa
I'm told Eric Ambler invented the "normal guy caught up in suspense" story, and that pretty much sums this up. A little slow getting started, but after that a mounting curve of mystery and suspense snowballing to a satisfying conclusion.
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1938
Local notes
517