Cause for Alarm is a novel by Eric Ambler first published in 1938. Set in Fascist Italy in that year, the book is one of Ambler's classic spy thrillers.
Nicholas Marlow, an English engineer engaged to a young doctor, one day, out of the blue, loses his well-paid job. After several months of sheer desperation, he responds to an advert by an English engineering company, the Spartacus Machine Tool Company of Wolverhamption. He is offered the post of...
more
Cause for Alarm is a novel by Eric Ambler first published in 1938. Set in Fascist Italy in that year, the book is one of Ambler's classic spy thrillers.
Nicholas Marlow, an English engineer engaged to a young doctor, one day, out of the blue, loses his well-paid job. After several months of sheer desperation, he responds to an advert by an English engineering company, the Spartacus Machine Tool Company of Wolverhamption. He is offered the post of the firm's representative in Italy. Although the firm does not itself make weapons, its main sales are of the "Spartacus Type S2 automatic" boring machine, which is used for shell production. Able to speak some Italian, Marlow gladly accepts, secretly deciding that he will quit the job again as soon as possible to go back to England and get married.
On arrival in Milan, he realizes that there is a huge backlog at his office, and that both Bellinetti, his personal assistant (male), and his secretary (female) are highly inefficient co-workers....
less
