A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS<i> by Eric Ambler (Carroll & Graf: $3.95) </i>

First published in 1937, Eric Ambler’s “A Coffin for Dimitrios” served as the model for the modern spy thriller reviewers call--with more enthusiasm than grammar--”a page-turner” or “a good read.” Mystery writer Charles Latimer painstakingly reconstructs the career of the elusive master criminal, drug dealer and paid assassin, Dimitrios Makropoulos; Ambler builds his story with equal care, inexorably leading the reader to a startling climax in the lower-class quarters of Paris. This taut evocation of Europe between the wars reveals how much pop pulp fiction, from the novels of John le Carre to “Murder, She Wrote,” owes to Eric Ambler.