The mask of Dimitrios

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The Mask of Dimitrios is a novel by the British author Eric Ambler . The book was first published in 1939 under the title The Mask of Dimitrios .

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The English crime writer Charles Latimer meets Colonel Haki , the head of the Turkish secret police, at a party while on vacation in Istanbul . Colonel Haki also wrote a detective novel in his spare time. He doesn't have time to write the novel and gives the draft to Latimer. They go to Colonel Haki's office, where the draft is kept.

Colonel Haki wonders if Latimer is also interested in real criminals. He tells Latimer about a criminal named Dimitrios , whose body was recently fished from the Bosporus . The dead person was identified using his ID, which is Dimitrios Makropoulos. Colonel Haki leads Latimer into the morgue and shows him the dead Dimitrios. Latimer can also take a look at Dimitrios' police files.

Since he wants to try himself as a detective instead of just writing about his detective work, Latimer decides to follow in the footsteps of Dimitrios' criminal career. He wants to try to find out more about Dimitrios than is in the file.

Latimer travels to Smyrna, today's Izmir , where Dimitrios murdered a money lender , the Jew Scholem , in 1922 and blamed the black Dhris Mohammed for the crime . The black protested his innocence to the end, but was executed anyway. Dimitrios was able to flee the city while the Turkish army occupied Smyrna and the Greeks who lived there fled out to sea.

The trail continues to Athens and from there to Sofia . During the train ride from Athens to Sofia, Latimer shares a sleeping car compartment with an older, plump man who introduces himself to him as Mr. Peters . On his last evening in Sofia, Latimer is surprised by Peters in his hotel room with a gun in hand. Peters wants to know why Latimer is interested in Dimitrios.

Latimer tells him his story. Peters then invites him to visit him in his Paris apartment . To prove his goodwill, Peters gives Latimer a letter for a certain Grodek who lives in Geneva . Grodek knows Dimitrios and can tell Latimer things about him that are not in the file.

Latimer travels to Geneva. He learns from Grodek, a former professional spy , that he recruited Dimitrios in Belgrade in 1926 . Dimitrios was supposed to help him get a secret nautical map from the Navy Ministry. After completing the task, Dimitrios stole the microfilm with the card in order to sell it on to a third power; he felt underpaid by Grodek.

In Paris, Latimer visits Peters in his apartment. He learns that Dimitrios and Peters ran a profitable drug trade with the Dutchman Visser and a few others . Dimitrios, however, betrayed his accomplices to the police. With the exception of Dimitrios, the gang went to jail while Dimitrios built a civil existence in a senior position at the Eurasian Credit Trust . The bank is mentioned several times in the novel and associated with Dimitrios, also as an opaque financier for terrorist acts.

Peters explains to the astonished Latimer that Dimitrios is still alive. After her release from prison, Visser followed Dimitrios' footsteps and regularly extorted small amounts of money from him. Thereupon Dimitrios murdered him on a cruise to Istanbul, put his own ID with the body and thus faked his own death.

Peters and Latimer meet Dimitrios in a shabby hotel room. There they blackmail him for a million francs with their knowledge.

After the money has been handed over, Latimer and Peters return to Peter's apartment. Dimitrios is already waiting for them with a weapon in hand. Peters is shot by Dimitrios. In the ensuing fight, Latimer is able to wrest the revolver from Dimitrios. The seriously injured Peters asks Latimer to give him his own pistol, in the English-language original a Lüger (sic!), In order to keep Dimitrios in check. Meanwhile, Latimer is supposed to call the police. Dimitrios tries in vain to hold him back by offering a bribe. Latimer overhears in the stairwell that several shots have been fired in the apartment. He hurries back. Dimitrios is dead, hit by three bullets, Peters is dying.

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The Mask of Dimitrios is an exciting detective novel with several flashbacks. For the most part, the characters are not clearly sympathetic or unappealing. Peters wants revenge on Dimitrios for the betrayal by blackmailing him. Latimer is reluctant to get involved in blackmail. He goes to the police in Paris, but the officer does not want to listen to him and is upset because Latimer has no ID with him.

background

The events in Izmir have a real background. In September 1922, the Turkish army recaptured Izmir, which was temporarily in Greek hands, in the Turkish-Greek War of Liberation. The Turkish army marched into the city. The city burned while Greek citizens fled out to sea in a panic. Many Greeks drowned or were shot by the Turks.

Others

Colonel Haki, the head of the Turkish secret police, also appears as a character in Ambler's next novel: Journey into Fear , published in 1940.

German translations

The first German translation by Mary Brand was published in 1950 by Nest-Verlag, Nuremberg. A text version supplemented and revised by Walter Hertenstein was published by Diogenes Verlag in 1974. In 1997 the same publisher published a new translation by Matthias Fienbork; this was reissued in 2016 by Verlag Hoffmann und Campe .

Impact history

The mask of Dimitrios is considered by many critics to be one of the most important spy novels, which is considered one of the most original versions of this genre in technology. Graham Greene later used the same fable in The Third Man both in the original screenplay for the film adaptation with Orson Welles in the lead role as well as in the post-film novel of the same name . Greene's protagonist follows in the footsteps of an old friend who is said to have died in an accident in post-war Vienna . Here, too, the research, which is put together like a puzzle, finally leads to the realization that the supposedly dead person is still alive.

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Current issues

Individual evidence

  1. See Paul Gerhard Buchloh , Jens P. Becker: The English spy novel. In: dies .: The detective novel . 2nd, revised edition. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1978, ISBN 3-534-05379-6 , p. 114.