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One Monday, Robert Halliday receives a bomb threat in the mail. Two days later, the bomb arrives--accompanied by an offer of employment from one Karliss Zander, an international fixer. Unless Halliday agrees to help him edit the memoirs of a 19th century Russian terrorist and ghostwrite an exposé of modern terrorist governments, Zander will detonate the bomb. For the sake of self-preservation, Halliday joins the project--but quickly discovers that Zander requires nbsp;more than mere literary assistance: He and his daughter are in mortal peril from a Middle Eastern terrorist group. Now tangled in this massive international web of danger, Halliday wonders if it wouldn't have been far less painful if that bomb had just gone off. The Care of Time, Eric Ambler's final novel, is a carefully constructed, utterly absorbing story of intrigue and suspense, one of the most acclaimed works of his more than sixty year career.… (meer)
This last of Ambler's novels is a slight step down from the superb novels that had just preceded it in the decade of the 1970s. But it's still a fascinating effort. Recurring themes, some old and some newer ones, emerge in the story. Once more the showdown and escape into a mountainous wilderness marks the end, as it had in a couple of Ambler's novels from the 1930s. So, too, does the less than reassuring ending and ambiguity that marked the works from the 1970s.
One thing is different, however, and it is the hero of this story, Robert Halliday. Halliday is as close to a professional in the spy game as Ambler ever gets. This former newsman with contacts with the CIA knows how to operate in the world of espionage. He is not the naive character(s) that populated Ambler's previous novels. But Halliday is also an exhausted figure. Perhaps he is more of an echo of the author than are Ambler's other protagonists. This was to be Ambler's last fictional novel. And much the same lingering tiredness and doubt about the world surrounds Halliday as well.
The ideological Ambler is far in the past with the The Care of Time. Answers don't come about very easily. Murky actions by governments and potentates point to a terrorist dominated world that eventually engulfs the old order. Nobody is to be trusted. And no set of beliefs will substitute for the sureties of the past. This is a grim world without a great deal of redemption, even at the personal level. Perhaps that is why Ambler made it his last novel. ( )
Written shortly after the Iranian Revolution and as the Iran-Iraq War had just begun, TCOT gives the reader a glimpse of things to come. Amber's inclusion of Sarin gas and the need for the principal users of this weapon to have actual human tests, telegraphs the actual use of this gas later in war and as a terrorist tool. ( )
This book was kind of a slow read for me. The plot is very dense and convoluted with a larger cast of characters than was really necessary. It is a very dated cold war/spy story involving the first hints of issues arising from the gulf. It also involves a journey to asylum for a retiring foreign "spook" for hire. in the end, it was a lot of work for not much payoff. And WAY too dated. They used Telex to communicate, for heaven sake. Pass it up. ( )
... if Ambler's recent work doesn't quite triumph by the more conventional criteria for suspense (criteria which his own early work helped to establish), non-thrill-seeking readers will continue to appreciate the rarer pleasures of Ambler's "Swiss period": graceful phrasing, an autumnal cosmopolitan elegance, and a wry, dignified cynicism which calmly gathers in all the horrors of each passing decade.
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Those wives of our great thinkers who tend to guard their husbands' sensibilities and reputations too jealously are generally disliked. They are also sometimes feared. The wife of A. I. Herzen, according to Michel B., was notable in this respect. Gossip about any young man with some trifling new thought in his head which might cause her husband intellectual discomfort, would disturb her profoundly. Condemnation of the upstart would instantly follow. She always used the same words and they always sounded like an evil spell. "Time," she would say venomously, "will take care of him!" Time, of course, will take care of us all, but one sees why she could arouse fear. And not only in the young. Our older men fear the hand of time striking at the causes in which they have believed as they fear the hand of death reaching out to claim their children. For those complacent optimists who have not yet learned to live, as we do, in the kingdom of despair, that first quick glimpse of failure must always seem like a vision of death itself.
From a memoir attributed to S. G. Nechayev (1847 - 82)
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
No dedication.
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
The warning message arrived on Monday, the bomb itself on Wednesday. It became a busy week.
Citaten
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Time is taking care of Zander, as it is taking care of me, steadily and, presumably, without much more fuss. His family, however, still has a long way to go. I am really not sure how I shall reply.
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
The author's last novel.
Uitgevers redacteuren
Auteur van flaptekst/aanprijzing
Oorspronkelijke taal
Gangbare DDC/MDS
Canonieke LCC
▾Verwijzingen
Verwijzingen naar dit werk in externe bronnen.
Wikipedia in het Engels
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▾Boekbeschrijvingen
One Monday, Robert Halliday receives a bomb threat in the mail. Two days later, the bomb arrives--accompanied by an offer of employment from one Karliss Zander, an international fixer. Unless Halliday agrees to help him edit the memoirs of a 19th century Russian terrorist and ghostwrite an exposé of modern terrorist governments, Zander will detonate the bomb. For the sake of self-preservation, Halliday joins the project--but quickly discovers that Zander requires nbsp;more than mere literary assistance: He and his daughter are in mortal peril from a Middle Eastern terrorist group. Now tangled in this massive international web of danger, Halliday wonders if it wouldn't have been far less painful if that bomb had just gone off. The Care of Time, Eric Ambler's final novel, is a carefully constructed, utterly absorbing story of intrigue and suspense, one of the most acclaimed works of his more than sixty year career.
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One thing is different, however, and it is the hero of this story, Robert Halliday. Halliday is as close to a professional in the spy game as Ambler ever gets. This former newsman with contacts with the CIA knows how to operate in the world of espionage. He is not the naive character(s) that populated Ambler's previous novels. But Halliday is also an exhausted figure. Perhaps he is more of an echo of the author than are Ambler's other protagonists. This was to be Ambler's last fictional novel. And much the same lingering tiredness and doubt about the world surrounds Halliday as well.
The ideological Ambler is far in the past with the The Care of Time. Answers don't come about very easily. Murky actions by governments and potentates point to a terrorist dominated world that eventually engulfs the old order. Nobody is to be trusted. And no set of beliefs will substitute for the sureties of the past. This is a grim world without a great deal of redemption, even at the personal level. Perhaps that is why Ambler made it his last novel. (