Charles Latimer Series

Thirty years after Eric Ambler introduced the world to his unlikely hero, the academic and novelist Charles Latimer, in A Coffin for Dimitrios, Latimer returns in The Intercom Conspiracy.

Now a successful, bestselling author on the trail of a new book, Latimer steps in to help Theodore Carter, the hapless, hard-drinking editor of Intercom, a small, international political newspaper, investigate his bosses and the sources of the secrets he’s publishing. It was recently purchased by two magnates who are, unbeknownst to the frazzled Carter, chief intelligence officers in two minor NATO countries. Not all of Intercom’s readers are happy with some recent stories, which are surprisingly more truthful and a lot more dangerous than the rumors and fictions that used to fill its pages—and some of those readers will go to any length to keep their secrets safe. As Latimer and Carter get closer to the truth, they realize they’re jeopardizing more than just their careers.

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The classic story of an ordinary man seemingly out of his depth, this is Ambler’s most widely acclaimed novel, “one of the masterpieces of the genre” (The New York Times Book Review).

A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel leads Charles Latimer, the author of a handful of successful mysteries, into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers. At first merely curious to reconstruct the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery that spans the Balkans.