The Dark Frontier: A Spy Thriller

By Eric Ambler

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345802659
• ISBN13: 9780345802651
• Release Date: December 2012
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great debut novel by prolific author

Reading "Dark Frontier" was quite an experience. Yes, parts of it are painfull outdated, and Ambler admits that in his introduction, but it was ahead of its time, and it is a great spy novel and adventure story. It stars an unlikely secret agent, Professor Barstow, a middle-aged and overworked physics professor, who turns into Conrad Carruthers, debonoir agent determined to stop nuclear proliferation. Alongside him in this adventure is a American reporter named Casey, and together they help the revolution in a fictional Balkan country overcome the evil aristocrats that want to use the A-bomb. Given it was written in 1935, 10 years before the first A-bomb was ever used, but in some ways, it is realistic. Very entertaining read.

The first novel by THE master of suspense and intrigue.

The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler's first novel, is often overlooked -- even by Ambler fans. This is unfortunate for, while it is not up to the standards of his subsequent novels, it is still quite good. Incidentally, although The Dark Frontier was written in the early 1930s, it involves the invention of a nuclear bomb -- one of the first (if not the first) novels on this subject.