Eric Ambler told an interviewer recently that though he often felt the urge to write for the stage he was put off by the scrutiny to which he would be subjected: and the pun in the title of his autobiography was a precaution against exposure. It proved less necessary than he had feared, but the message underlying the opening chapter is unmistakable: readers, and reviewers in particular, should keep their distance. The chapter takes the form of a prologue, characteristically melodramatic, and with an oblique jump back through time. He has turned his new car over on a motorway in Switzerland, and is taken to hospital with concussion, miraculously lucky to be alive. He tries to deceive the doctors into setting him free so that he can go home and diagnose himself with the aid of his forensic-science library, but they keep him in for observation. He's suffering from amnesic aphasia, and observes his own symptoms, wondering if the wits by which he has lived will now desert him for ever. He can't remember ... and then suddenly he does remember what he had been thinking about when the accident occurred.

LRB 3 October 1985 | PDF Download