Why are Eric Ambler's novels so popular? Why are they timeless and even now, more than half a century after they were written, are read with unflagging interest? It’s not so much the style of these works, but the unusualness of their heroes. They are not “James Bonds”, not supermen, not super spies, and often not even professional intelligence officers, but the most ordinary people who happened to live in the era of the pre-war decade. People like journalist Kenton, who never held a gun in his life, but managed to get involved in a dangerous duel between European intelligence services.