WAITING FOR ORDERS is a collection of the author's shorter works, written in 1929-1940 as Ambler, already a successful suspense novelist, waited for his call to military duty. Included in WAITING FOR ORDERS are "The Army of Shadows," his earliest published short story; "The Intrusions of Dr. Czissar," a collection of detective stories; and "The Blood Bargain," a short story that the author abandoned and then came back to in 1970.
Secreted in a filthy, cramped cabin on the Italian steamer Sestri Levante, an Englishman begins his terrified flight across wartime Europe. For Graham, an engineer working for an arms company, the inconvenience which began in a hotel room in old Istanbul has become a nightmare from which he fears he may never wake. His pursuers have already wounded him - surely the next time they will not miss. But who are they? And where on the long sea passage to Genoa will they make their move? In his classic tale of the hunted man, thriller master Eric Ambler redefined the boundaries of the spy story and spoke for a generation now bowed by world war.
The Dark Frontier is the debut novel of Eric Ambler, who contributed so much to the espionage and crime genres through such marvelous books as Background to Danger, Epitaph for a Spy, Cause for Alarm, A Coffin for Dimitrios, and Journey into Fear. Written in 1936, it was not published in the United States for several decades. The book varies quite a lot from the rest of his work, and will be less satisfying to almost any reader. Serious Ambler fans, however, would be making a mistake if they passed up this book. Seeing this effort will help them appreciate the mature Ambler talent even more.
