The Levanter

Rating:
Summary: Charming in an Old Fashioned Way
Review: "The Levanter" is one of the original (copyright 1974) Terrorist novels that are very popular today.

It is 1972 and the Middle east is changing (again), in response to the Israeli victory in the Six-day war and the pressures of the Palestinians refugees on neighboring countries. The main protagonist is a western businessman, the owner of a firm long established in the Middle east. A Palestinian group threatens the man, his family, and firm to use them to strike against Israel. The man threads a tangle of personalities, movements, obligations, and politics to preserve everything he cares about.

This is a good read from a historical point of view. The author has a familiar, although now considered old-fashioned style (probably the result of much copying). In fiction, it shows how little has changed in the Middle east in the last thirty-years.

Rating:
Summary: Good Suspense, Intriguing Characters, Good History
Review: A Levanter is an inhabitant of the Levant, the countries of the eastern Mediterranean.

I am new to Eric Ambler. In recent months I have read and reviewed two stories from his early career, A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939) and Journey into Fear (1940), one from his mid-career (The Light of Day, 1962), and now his 1972 novel, The Levanter.

His early writing career was interrupted by WWII. Entering as a private in the Royal Artillery and serving in Italy, Ambler was later assigned to a combat photographic unit. Ambler ultimately earned the rank of lieutenant colonel and although British, he was even awarded an American Bronze Star.

His postwar career focused more on writing screenplays for Hollywood and television, but he did continue to write an occasional new espionage story. The Levanter (1972) was among his last books.

His early stories have exciting plots, but his early characters lack the fascinating complexity of his misguided and all-to-clever protagonist, Michael Howell, found in the Levanter. I quite enjoyed The Levanter and I believe that it compares favorably with the early John LeCarre novels.

In The Levanter Ambler tells a story through the eyes of three characters: Lewis Prescott (an experienced journalist interested in Michael Howell's situation) in chapters 1, 3, and 8, Michael Howell himself in chapters 2, 4, 6, and 7; and Teresa Malandra (Michael's secretary and lover) in chapter 5.

The setting is 1970 Syria, three years after the Six Days War. The Baathist Party, in power since 1963, has been steadily nationalizing all industry and Michael Howell considers his family's (third generation) commercial holdings at great risk. His plans to cleverly shelter his Syrian operations come apart when he involuntarily becomes an integral component in a plot to launch a substantial terrorist attack on Israel.

I was disconcerted by one aspect of Ambler's story. Despite the passage of three decades, The Levanter still reads like a contemporary novel. Today, for political and security reasons Israel still holds territory acquired during the Six Days War while the Syrian Baathist party continues to covertly (and not so covertly) support terrorist activities against Israel. With the recent Iraqi War and the resulting "new reality" in the Middle East, maybe there is some hope that someday The Levanter will no longer seem like contemporary fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Plus Ca Change, Plus C'Est La Meme Chose!
Review: To read or not to read the great espionage novels of Eric Ambler? That is the question most people ignore because they are not familiar with Mr. Ambler and his particularly talent.

Mr. Ambler has always had this problem. As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his introduction to Intrigue (an omnibus volume containing Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, Cause for Alarm and Background to Danger), "Perhaps this was the volume that brought Mr. Ambler to the attention of the public that make best-sellers. They had been singularly inattentive until its appearance -- I suppose only God knows why." He goes on to say, "They had not even heeded the critics, who had said, from the very first, that Mr. Ambler had given new life and fresh viewpoint to the art of the spy novel -- an art supposedly threadbare and certainly clich?-infested."

So what's new and different about Eric Ambler's writing? His heroes are ordinary people with whom almost any reader can identify, which puts you in the middle of a turmoil of emotions. His bad guys are characteristic of those who did the type of dirty deeds described in the book. His angels on the sidelines are equally realistic to the historical context. The backgrounds, histories and plot lines are finely nuanced into the actual evolution of the areas and events described during that time. In a way, these books are like historical fiction, except they describe deceit and betrayal rather than love and affection. From a distance of many years, we read these books today as a way to step back into the darkest days of the past and relive them vividly. You can almost see and feel a dark hand raised to strike you in the back as you read one of his book's later pages. In a way, these stories are like a more realistic version of what Dashiell Hammett wrote as applied to European and Middle Eastern espionage.

Since Mr. Ambler wrote, the thrillers have gotten much bigger in scope . . . and moved beyond reality. Usually, the future of the human race is at stake. The heroes make Superman look like a wimp in terms of their prowess and knowledge. There's usually a love interest who exceeds your vision of the ideal woman. Fast-paced violence and killing dominate most pages. There are lots of toys to describe and use in imaginative ways. The villains combine the worst faults of the 45 most undesirable people in world history and have gained enormous wealth and power while being totally crazy. The plot twists and turns like cruise missile every few seconds in unexpected directions. If you want a book like that, please do not read Mr. Ambler's work. You won't like it.

If you want to taste, touch, smell, see and hear evil from close range and move through fear to defeat it, Mr. Ambler's your man.

On to The Levanter. In this novel, we find Mr. Ambler operating at his full powers, combining remarkable character development with complex plots and delicious ambiguity. You will be reminded of Mr. Le Carre.

Uncharacteristically, his protagonist, Michael Howell, is a man of great intelligence, sophistication and subtlety. So he can take on a greater threat than anyone else. Fascinated by the problem of extracting his family's investments from Lebanon, he's been collaborating with the government in covert activities. This backfires when he accidentally learns that one of his factories has been taken over by the Palestinian Action Force as a base for terrorist activities. Howell finds himself forced to help implement an anti-Israeli raid. How will he overcome this challenge?

Howell is one of Ambler's best characters, full of moral ambiguity. He's so good at looking out for his own interests, that he constantly is taking advantage even of those who are trying to take advantage of him. In this book, we get a sense of the mental and moral toughness of a trader. I found the book to seem immensely realistic.

The story telling is strengthened by varying the role of who the narrator is so that you see more dimensions of the plot. Part of the story is told by Howell, part by Lewis Prescott (a journalist hose attempting to sort out what really happened) and part by Teresa Malandra (Howell's co-worker in Lebanon and mistress). I'm sure that small businessmen in Middle Eastern countries still face the issues exposed in this plot, which makes the story chillingly timely, even though it is set in the late sixties.
Howell's solution to the problem is quite original and interesting. I think you'll enjoy it.

After you finish this story, think about where your principles are compromised by the actions of others who are outside your control. How can you ensure that those inadvertent compromises do no harm?