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“JAMES BOND… MAY NOT HAVE GOTTEN HIS LICENSE TO KILL WITHOUT AMBLER’S INFLUENCE”: VERY SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF CAUSE FOR ALARM, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY ERIC AMBLER

AMBLER, Eric. Cause for Alarm. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of the fourth novel by Ambler, “father of the modern spy novel,” warmly inscribed on the title page by him to noted author, critic and bibliophile, “For Clive Hirschorn yet again—Eric Ambler, London ’89,” in rarely found original dust jacket.

“James Bond… may not have gotten his license to kill without Ambler’s influence… During the years before WWII Ambler helped create the image of the modern spy.” In Cause for Alarm, a British engineer working in Fascist Italy is “blind to ethical issues until he is lured into an even more lurid series of compromises… Graham Greene praised Ambler as ‘the greatest living writer of the novel of suspense’… Julian Evans, writing in The Guardian in 1997, called him ‘the begetter of the modern thriller’” (New York Times). Ambler noted that when the British publication of Cause for Alarm in 1938 earned praise, Alfred Knopf “was particularly pleased” but wanted to publish it in America without chapter 17. Ambler asked editor “Leonard Cutts what he thought. ‘Chapter 17 happens to the best in the book,’ he said sturdily; ‘it will not be left out of the British edition under any circumstances. That’s American publishing for you’… Cause for Alarm was published in the United States later on that year [1939] without the original chapter 17″ (Here Lies). “Father of the modern spy thriller… Ambler was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1975 and received the first Golden Dagger Award from the Veterans of the OSS in 1989” (Encyclopedia of British Writers, 7). Hubin II:14. Reilly, 30. Recipient Clive Hirschorn, the respected South African writer, theatre and film critic, moved to Britain in the early 1960s where he was famed for his interviews with notable authors and filmmakers. A passionate bibliophile, Hirschorn assembled “one of the world’s finest collections of rare first-edition books,” featuring works by Ambler, Steinbeck, Faulkner and others (Sunday Express). Tiny inkstamp, “12-36,” to rear free endpaper.

Book fresh and crisp; light edge-wear, small trace of label removal to spine, hint of tape reinforcement to verso of rarely found unrestored dust jacket. A very scarce near-fine inscribed copy.