English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of police inspector Colonel Haki, from whom he hears of Dimitrios - a criminal. Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios' steps to gather material for a new book. In entering Dimitrios' criminal underworld, he realizes that his own life may be on the line.

Eric Ambler (1909-98) was one of the most fascinating British writers of the late 1930s. His novels retain a remarkable sense of the dread and terror that filled Europe as world war broke out. Some were made into films (not least Orson Welles' superb version of Journey into Fear), all were bestsellers, inventing a new, more realistic form of spy novel, where the main protagonist is not so much a hero as a victim, pursued by malevolent Fascist forces of overwhelming power. These are paranoid stories, but written at a time when paranoia was disturbingly close to common sense.