Arthur Abdel Simpson Books in Order

Arthur Abdel Simpson is one of Eric Ambler's most distinctive creations: a half-British, half-Egyptian petty crook who narrates his own misadventures with a blend of bravado, self-pity and comic alarm. Forever short of money and papers, he is stateless in more ways than one.

In The Light of Day, Simpson is scraping a living in Athens as a tour guide and taxi driver, padding his income by stealing from his clients. When he tries to rob an apparently rich tourist named Harper, the plan backfires. Harper catches him and blackmails him into driving a big American car across the border into Turkey. At the frontier the police discover hidden weapons in the bodywork, and Simpson is abruptly transformed from pathetic thief to potential gun-runner.

He is the man in the middle of a heist he barely understands, surrounded by professionals who treat him as expendable.

The Turkish authorities see an opportunity and pressure Simpson into cooperating with them. Soon he is acting as interpreter and unwilling helper to a gang planning an audacious robbery in Istanbul, in scenes that mix suspense with farce and a sharp eye for tourist-side Europe. Simpson’s constant calculations about money, escape routes and his own safety give the story its nervous energy.

Dirty Story, subtitled A Further Account of the Life and Adventures of Arthur Abdel Simpson, finds him even more adrift. Denied a passport and facing life as a permanent exile, he is recruited by a shadowy mining company involved in a power struggle over mineral rights in a fictional African state. Simpson is wildly unsuited to the role of mercenary, yet his chronic caution and low-level cunning help him survive a plot full of coups, company men and shifting alliances.

Taken together, the Simpson novels show Ambler working in a more overtly comic key while keeping the moral and political bite of his earlier books. They explore themes of identity, bureaucracy and exploitation from the perspective of someone who is always one mistake away from prison or worse. It is best to read them in order, starting with The Light of Day and then following Simpson into the murkier world of Dirty Story.