HONOUR AND REVOLUTION

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33857, 31 May 1975, Page 10

HONOUR AND REVOLUTION

Doctor Frigo. By Eric Ambler. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 250 pp. N.Z. price $6.10. Eric Ambler has an impressive list of books written over what is now a long time. He maintains an enviably high standard of writing, compactly stylish in language, strongly flexible in design, vivid in character presentation. Usually he writes of espionage and of revolutionary intrigue. His action is incisive, forceful, . and direct, always credible and never sadistic; he makes no concessions to the prurient, the blasphemous, or the twisted. His stories are at the top of their genre. This book is the story of young Dr Ernesto Castillo, working on an island in the French Antilles as an interne in a hospital, and under the government health service. As the son of an assassinated president of a country in the South American bloc, he was the white hope of his father’s party in its rebid for power. But to him all that belonged to the dim past, and he was not interested.

But Dr Frigo became involved when Villegas, an old friend of his father, and an aspirant for the presidency should the revolution succeed, arrived on the island. French officials there, a type of Gallic C.1.A., forced Dr Frigo to become medical adviser to Villegas and to act as their spy. He found that Villegas was, unsuspectedly, a very sick man, and when be moved towards • his revolution, Dr Frigo felt bound to accompany him, thus becoming much involved. The account of the revolt and its unexpected outcome is brilliant. Dr Frigo’s professional honour is sorely tried by his enforced obligations to the French officials and this tension, too, is an important part of the book. His delightful mistress, Elizabeth, is a Hapsburg, and this background colours her ideas and conduct verv entertainingly. There are many coloured threads in the texture of this story. Eric Ambler draws ’them together expertly into interesting and diverting patterns.