I’ve read several of Ambler’s books in the last few years and they’ve all been pretty entertaining, and make for fairly light hearted journeys into a version of the past that’s grey but not too dark. This one was written in 1962 and is set sometime post-second world war. Arthur is a petty crook in Athens who picks on the wrong target and unwittingly gets himself involved into a bigger kind of crime than he’s used to.

My problem here is that I’m pretty certain I’ve never read this before and yet so much of it was so very familiar to me. Maybe I’ve read it before? But I haven’t logged it here with all the other books I’ve read since 1999 and though I know I’ve missed a few out over the years I was pretty certain Ambler was new to me when I first read A Kind of Anger. Maybe he wasn’t, and maybe I read it sometime 25+ years ago. Or maybe it’s just that the kind of devices in use here are the kind that are used and re-used in all kinds of spy and crime fiction so this felt derivative where it probably wasn’t at the time it was written. It made for an odd read anyway; mostly I just thought I was reading a familiar genre until one section late in the book made me think I’d really read this before.

Specifically, and with spoilers, if there’s another book out there that features a break in to a palace like this going up to the roof and coming down, with a reluctant member of the team, then I’d love to know what it is!

Whilst there were details in the book that annoyed me I didn’t really think they were related to the fact that I was reading sixty years after its publication. If anything, Arthur’s mixed Egyptian and British ancestry garnered less trouble in the book than I’d expect today, and viewing the tribulations of a character who’s pretty much rendered himself stateless was interesting. I thought it stood up pretty well as entertainment, I just wish I could work out whether it was a re-read or not!