The Schirmer Inheritance - Tapa blanda

George Cary, former WWII bomber pilot and newly minted lawyer, reviews the files on the Schneider Johnson case, to make sure nothing has been overlooked. What George discovers connects a deserter from Napoleon’s defeated army to a guerrilla fighter in post-war Greece, and leads him into a dangerous situation where his own survival will depend more on what he learned in the army than anything he learned in law school.

Eric Ambler began his writing career in the early 1930s, and quickly established a reputation as a thriller writer of extraordinary depth and originality. He is often credited as the inventor of the modern political thriller. Ambler began his working life at an engineering firm, then as a copywriter at an advertising agency, while in his spare time he worked on his ambition to become a playwright. His first novel was published in 1936 and as his reputation as a novelist grew he turned to writing full time. During the war he was seconded to the Army Film Unit, where he wrote, among other projects, The Way Ahead with Peter Ustinov. He moved to Hollywood in 1957 and during his eleven years there scripted some memorable films, including A Night to Remember and The Cruel Sea, which won him an Oscar nomination. In a career spanning over sixty years, Eric Ambler wrote nineteen novels and was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award for Passage of Arms in 1960. He was married to Joan Harrison, who wrote or co-wrote many of Alfred Hitchcock’s screenplays – in fact Hitchcock organized their wedding. Eric Ambler died in London in October 1998.