Book Review: The Levanter (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Eric
Ambler  By    |   Friday, January 18, 2013 Filed under: Book
Reviews, Books Tags: , , , , , ,  Change a few details and Eric
Ambler’s thriller The Levanter, published over 40 years ago in
1972, could well have been written today. The story, set in
Syria in 1970 with most of the Middle-East still in turmoil less
than 30 years after the creation of the state of Israel, deals
with a Cypriot business man who gets himself caught up in a
terrorist plot hatched by a Palestinian splinter group–the kind
of terrorist plot that might well be keeping the 24 hour news
channels as busy, if not busier, than an oil field raid and
hostage taking. The more things change, the more they stay the
same.  Once again Ambler builds on his patented plot device
where an ordinary citizen finds himself thrust into a cloak and
dagger world where spies, terrorists and agents, secret and
otherwise, ply their trade, a world very much outside his normal
experience. As early as Amb