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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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Send us a text

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!

Get your book here!
Watch clips from our conversation with Neil!
Join our Patreon community here! It's free to join, with extra perks for members at every level.

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.

Among the writers of crime and suspense he has edited are Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, John Sandford, C. J. Box, Robert Crais, Carl Hiaasen, Daniel Silva, Jack Higgins, Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett, Jonathan Kellerman, Martha Grimes, Alex Berenson, Thomas Perry, Gerald Seymour, Ed McBain, and Ace Atkins. In all, he has edited more than 300 New York Times bestsellers.

Neil Nyren was awarded the 2017 Ellery Queen Award for “outstanding people in the mystery publishing industry” from the Mystery Writers of America. He also received the 2025 Thriller Legend award from the International Thriller Writers.

Besides still editing two of his longtime authors, he now writes about crime fiction and publishing for CrimeReads, BookTrib, The Big Thrill, and The Third Degree, among others. He is also a contributing writer to the Mystery Writers of America’s Anthony/Agatha/Macavity-winning How to Write a Mystery. He has spoken at conferences from Maine to Florida and from South Carolina to Hawaii.

The Opening

Neil, you wrote, “Eric Ambler’s heroes, especially in his between-wars novels (1936-1940), are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. They’re often engineers, journalists, or writers who stumble into danger through a combination of bad judgment and bad luck and then have no choice but to try to dig themselves out of it … They are solidly middle class, raised in a world of black-and-white certainties that they discover has been completely obliterated by gray.”

Neil, you wrote, “Eric Ambler’s villains live in that gray. They’re criminals, conmen, governments, corporations, revolutionaries, spies, and corrupt officials. … They’re realists. They’ve calculated what it takes to succeed and are willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. If those acts are considered reprehensible by others, that’s not their problem.”

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Ten strangers, each with a dark secret, are lured to a remote island and drawn into a deadly game. As the body count rises, paranoia intensifies in this classic whodunit. Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1939) will keep you guessing until the very end. Check out the And Then There Were None notes below!

Special guest Ann Perramond joins us to discuss the best-selling crime novel of all time. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!

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Justice Wargrave (good name) is described as looking cruel, predatory, and inhuman. He’s the logical choice for U.N. Owen, the man playing judge, jury, and executioner. How is the opening (and the narrator’s ability to dip in and out of all characters’ heads) a red herring? Were you misled?

Did you know anything about And Then There Were None before reading it? If so, did this impact your experience of the novel? (It reminded us of Knives Out. And the movie Clue!)

Who did you think the killer was before the identity is revealed? Was there anyone you suspected? Did you think someone was hiding on the island? (Sarah thought someone had to be hiking on the island.)

Suspense thriller author Dean Koontz says people are always living in a “constant state of suspense.” Do you feel that suspense is a fundamental part of human existence? Are people constantly wondering about the future, facing unknown situations, and dealing with uncertainty? PARANOIA

Did knowing the characters’ responsibility for the deaths of innocents impact how you felt when the characters themselves were murdered?

And Then There Were None notes about death order: Justice Wargrave arranges the deaths of the various characters in order of ascending culpability. “Anthony Marston and Mrs. Rogers died first, the one instantaneously, the other in a peaceful sleep.” Marston, I recognized, was a type born without that feeling of moral responsibility which most have. He was amoral–pagan. Mrs. Rogers, I had no doubt, had acted very largely under the influence of her husband.” Do you agree with his assessment of the characters’ relative guilt?

Incorporated into this is the level of guilt they felt about their crime. Wargrave gives Marston one of the easiest deaths. He killed two children he could barely remember and felt no remorse. Claythorne, who killed a child for love and felt remorse, has the worst death. This makes no sense. A lack of remorse feels more monstrous. Also, the general killed for revenge against the man sleeping with his wife behind his back. This feels again more understandable than Marston. Is Emily Brent really worse than Rogers, who committed actual murder? Both are witholders in some way. One withheld medicine. One withheld pity.

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