I read Eric Ambler’s novel a few months ago (titled A Coffin for Dimitrios in America but The Mask of Dimitrios in the UK). I had been reading Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and picked a novel that had been on my gotta get around to reading it pile to see how well it aligned with the plot structure and breaks that the Save the Cat! book said were nearly universal for well-written novels.
As it happened, A Coffin for Dimitrios did indeed fit the structure that the Save the Cat! book suggested.
I enjoyed the novel, even if it had some flaws.
Once upon a time (like most of the 20th century), if someone was talking to themselves for more than a few words, your first guess might have been schizophrenia. Nowadays you might assume that they have a Bluetooth-connected device. Yet in chapter 8 (page 141 of the Black Lizard edition) Charles Latimer talks to himself quite a bit. Since Latimer doesn’t appear to have a mental illness anywhere else, I can only assume that Ambler was indulging a weakness for exposition. And almost all of chapter 9 is a long letter to Marukis in Athens. This may be somewhat excusable since the alternative might have been extremely lengthy exposition in the scene with Grodek. But it seems to violate the show rather than tell dictum that so many writers strive for.
The novel (set in 1938 in Istanbul, Athens, Sofia, Geneva, and Paris) and published in 1939 was the basis for a 1944 movie (with the U.K. The Mask of Dimitrios title) starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. I finally got around to watching the movie over the weekend.
It’s a rare movie that slavishly recreates the novel it’s based on, and the movie version of The Mask of Dimitrios diverges from the novel frequently but follows it closely in other ways. Probably the biggest difference is that the English Charles Latimer character from the book is replaced by the Dutch Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre). Maybe because Lorre couldn’t fake a British accent?
The movie glosses over the Latimer/Leyden backstory from the novel and Sydney Greenstreet’s character is not as complex in the movie as in the book. But Lorre and Greenstreet both put in fine performances, with Leyden having a sly sense of humor that Latimer never had. The movie and the book have different endings, but both ring true.
I’d recommend both the book and the movie. If you opt for both, probably the book first. But the movie stands on its own.
A Bit of Serendipity:
Peter Lorre played Le Chiffre in the first screen version of a James Bond novel, the 1954 television adaptation of Casino Royale. And then in Ian Fleming’s later From Russia, With Love, Bond reads The Mask of Dimitrios while on the plane taking him to Istanbul.
The theatrical release poster and Ambler’s first edition book cover are both shown as “fair use” on Wikipedia.