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The intricate plot, morally complex characters, and exploration of the human psyche in A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS (THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS) (1939) make it one of the first modern suspense thrillers. Eric Ambler paved the way for such writers as John Le Carré, Len Deighton, and Robert Ludlum. It’s one of TIME Magazine’s 100 best mystery and thriller books of all time.

Special guest Neil Nyren joins us to discuss the book. Check out the conversation starters below. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!

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Neil Nyren is the former executive vice president (EVP), associate publisher, and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Neil is the winner of the 2017 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the 2025 Thriller Legend award from the International Thriller Writers.

Neil joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss A Coffin for Dimitrios (also published as The Mask of Dimitrios), a 1939 thriller by Eric Ambler.

You can read Neil’s many articles on Crime Reads here.

The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time (TIME Magazine)
“In an Eric Ambler spy novel, the hero is usually an ordinary fellow who lands in an unfamiliar foreign city and soon finds himself in rising water. In A Coffin For Dimitrios, published in 1939, the city is Istanbul between the world wars, and the hero is a writer intrigued by a newly dead Greek criminal whose life story leads him deep into the Balkans, and worse. Everything unfolds with the brisk tension and debonair assurance that made Ambler fans of everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to John le Carré to Alan Furst, and anchored the nascent genre in a kind of dashing realism.” —Karl Vick (TIME Magazine editor)

“I set out to improve a shoddy article,” Eric Ambler once explained. “Dorothy Sayers had taken the detective story and made it literate. Why shouldn’t I do the same for spies?”

Neil, you wrote, “Eric Ambler was the father of the modern thriller. John Le Carré called him ‘the source on which we all draw,’ and Len Deighton, ‘the man who lit the way for us all.’ Frederick Forsyth said he was the man ‘who took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets where it all really happened.’ Graham Greene called him ‘unquestionably our best thriller writer.’”

Neil, you wrote, “I’ve worked with many writers of international suspense, and whenever I’ve wanted to recommend a book to any of them that captures the genre as well as any book possibly can—this is the one I send them to.”

Neil, you wrote, “Before Eric Ambler, international thrillers were dominated by such writers as John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps) and their many imitators.” Talk a bit about the difference between these earlier books and books like Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household and A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Amble

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