The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

 The Light of  Day by Eric Ambler

published 1962

White slacks and sandals and a loose white shirt

 

There is something very unusual and intriguing about this book.

It was an award-winning bestseller, made into a very successful, Oscar-winning, film - but the emphasis in the film was so changed that I consider that even just the title of it would spoiler the book. So I am not going to mention it. I think this is a unique book/film situation.

The Light of Day is a nice thriller with a classic Ambler ‘hero’ – Arthur Simmonds,  a very shady character indeed. Of mixed Egyptian and British heritage, he slides along making a living in some very dubious ways: he is in Athens when we meet him, and is slowly revealed as having had a long career of petty crime of one kind or another. It’s a first person narrative, and as the book goes on we get more and more details  slipped quietly into his discourse: the drinking, the car crashes - it is strangely charming and very funny. Talking about his experiences in jails: ‘in my experience – although I have only really been arrested ten or twelve times in my whole life…  all jails seem to smell of disinfectants, urine, sweat and leather’.

He gets caught out by a visiting tourist/businessman, Harper, who is then in a position to blackmail him into doing some jobs for him. He takes a car from Greece into Turkey, and you just know something bad is going to happen on the border… Hilariously, the car has been allowed through, but he doesn’t make it, and he keeps trying to make this anomaly work to his advantage.

As it was, the whole thing became completely disastrous; certainly through no fault of  mine

- and he could be saying that at regular intervals throughout the book. In this case it is because his passport is out of date, and it is hard to think who else’s fault it could be.

But of course he is a born loser, and he ends up being offered a way out: he can continue with his trip, but he must spy on the dubious gang of people he is tied up with. The authorities are very suspicious indeed, and worry that they are planning an insurrection, a political assassination, an attempted coup d’etat. Arthur  is supposed to track them and report back on what they are doing. He makes it to Istanbul, hooks up with the randomers, and they all end up in a villa on the Bosphorous. By now Arthur is reporting that this crew may all be Russian spies, although his own theory is that they are part of a major drugs operation. There is a mysterious triangular map – what does it show?

Everyone is quite inept and there are all kinds of narrow escapes, and unlucky moments. The secret radio Arthur is given for vital communications is far too loud and he can’t turn it down, he has to go under the bedclothes.

There is really only one female character of any importance, though she is rather splendid and Arthur admires her very much:

She was wearing a light yellow cotton dress that did even less to obscure the shape of her body than the slacks and shirt I had seen her in the day before.

He is caught between the major players and the servants in the villa. The drunken chef hates his employers, and so serves up terrible food to them, while he makes delicious dinners for Arthur and the other servants. There is the question of whether the cook has access to a bathroom…. And is that why the poshos didn’t get the delicious soup? I enjoyed these scenes so much, and they turned out to be part of a vital plot turn also – Ambler was a very clever writer.

The whole point of the book is that Arthur and the reader do not know what the gang is up to. But their plan is the starting point of the film – obviously a conscious decision by the film-makers – and yes even the name of it could give it away… I knew before I started the book which film it was, so effectively I did not have that particular mystery.  But the book is 78% of the way through before it is clear to the new reader what the planned crime is.

The film is enjoyable enough, very much of its time, and the rendition of Arthur Simmonds is absolutely wonderful – his seediness, the almost-worn-out charm, the eternal optimism. Very nicely done indeed.  

In both book and film I found him endearing:

‘Kira knows there’s something [suspicious] because you’ve cashed quite a few traveller’s cheques with her.’

‘She told you that?’ This really upset me; the least one can expect from a brothel-keeper is discretion.

I posted on Ambler’s very enjoyable Epitaph for a Spy in 2022