Arms smuggling
Weapons smuggling , original title Passage of Arms , is a thriller by the British writer Eric Ambler from 1959. A translation into German by Tom Knoth was published in 1963. It is the story of an Indian secretary on a rubber plantation in the British colony of Malaya who has an arms store of Communist rebels discovered and turned these weapons into money with imagination and skill in order to eventually build a company.
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The book is divided into ten chapters, each describing a different setting, and tells three stories in which the main actors act completely logically. The main plot consists of the story of a coup that the little Indian secretary Girija Krishnan, who is in British service, plans and carries out meticulously for years. When he happened to come across the weapons cache of a group of guerrilla fighters killed by a British commando , he should actually report this to the authorities. However, since he does not have the funds to realize his childhood dream of founding his own bus company, he decides to sell the weapons he found.
The second story is that of the Chinese businessman Tan Siow Ming and his family of traders, along with his business-unreliable, gambling-addicted brother, who is always in financial difficulties and can therefore be blackmailed. In this family Girija Krishnan finds a suitable partner for his plan and they come to an agreement. In order to legalize the weapons for sale and to find a customer at all, Tan Siow Ming uses all of his family relationships and business connections in the region in order to win a British or American as a front man for the lucrative arms business. Only these people are able to trade in war weapons across borders, unmolested by the colonial authorities. The Islamic anti-colonialist rebels on Sumatra come into question as customers for the weapons .
The third scenario of the story is about the bored American couple Dorothy and Greg Nilsen from Wilmington (Delaware), who, in their not very harmonious relationship, are going on a trip around the world on a passenger steamer. In them, a relative of the Tan Siow Ming clan happens to find the right people for the deal. In her wish to finally experience something on her journey, also to somehow get rid of the affectionate fellow traveler Arlene Drecker, who is trying to get close to Dorothy. Greg lets himself be persuaded in Hong Kong by a Chinese rental car driver who has been looking for a suitable person to trade for his brother-in-law Tan for months, to help as an American do something against the communists in Red China . It is supposed to help them bypass a small bureaucratic hurdle when transporting a shipment of small arms. All Greg has to do is sign some papers and he should be rewarded with an appropriate payment. But of course difficulties and new conditions arise, so that the Nilsens have to fly to Sumatra to conduct trade with the anti-communist Islamic rebels. Shortly after arriving, however, they are arrested by the Indonesian authorities for smuggling arms. After the rebels attacked the prison, the prison was liberated and fell into the hands of the insurgents. In the end, the deal comes about after a detour, and Girija Krishnan is able to set up his bus company.
- Award
- In 1959, the British Crime Writers' Association awarded the novel Passage of Arms a Crossed Red Herrings Award ( Dagger Award ) for crime fiction.
Historical context
Arms smuggling is Ambler's last book in which a gullible, slightly naive person, mostly British or American, does the wrong thing with good intentions and thus gets into hair-raising adventures. This story is set in Indochina in the early 1950s, when the British colony of Malaya still existed, but attempts for independence from Great Britain by guerrillas, militarily supported by Mao Tse-tung 's People 's Republic of China, led to unrest through attacks in the country. At the same time, in the state of Indonesia , declared independent from the Netherlands by Sukarno in 1945, there was an anti-communist, Islamic rebel army that not only fought against the Dutch, who still controlled some islands, but also against the left-wing government of Sukarno. In these political correlations of the Cold War in Indochina, history plays with its subtle ramifications.
“Also, I don't want to hide the fact that Volker Schlöndorff recently presented me with Eric Ambler's arms smuggling ; Now this thriller, set between Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore and Sumatra, in the original English version, Passage of Arms , belongs to Harm Peter's luggage. "
" Arms smuggling is a small phenomenon: a part of non-fiction, part of a classic crime thriller, plus a pinch of Ian Fleming 007. a heaped spoon of Raymond Chandler - the whole thing is by no means meant in the sense of an intellectual loan, but rather as an intellectual relationship with the greats of this genre which he joins as a matter of course. "
Editions and publications
- Passage of arms. Heinemann, London 1959, OCLC 297301700 .
- A coffin for Dimitrios, Judgment on Deltchev, Passage of arms. (Three novels in one anthology) Galahad Books, New York 1992, ISBN 0-88365-805-4 .
Translated from English by Tom Knoth
- Arms smuggling. (= Rororo Taschenbuch. Edition 540.) Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1963, OCLC 73224413 .
- Arms smuggling. (= Diogenes-Taschenbuch. 75/7.) Diogenes-Verlag, Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-257-20364-0 . (= Diogenes-Taschenbuch. 20364th edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-257-20364-6 .)
Audio books
- Richard Brown: Passage of arms. Books on Tape, Newport Beach 1989, OCLC 19274336 .
- John Chancer: Passage of Arms. Audible Ltd, 2012.
Web links
- Passage of Arms (1959) - by Eric Ambler. on asienreisender.de (table of contents, English)
- Thomas Jones: Dangerous games. on theguardian.com (secondary post about the Ambler novels during the Cold War era, English)
- Passage of Arms on penguinrandomhouse.com (English with reviews)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Passage of Arms on goodreads.com
- ^ Peter Wolfe: Alarms and epitaphs: the art of Eric Ambler. Popular Press, Bowling Green 1993, ISBN 0-87972-603-2 . ( online, p. 108. )
- ↑ Crossed Red Herring Awards ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on thedaggers.co.uk
