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Time is an Ambush edition by Francis Clifford Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks

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Time is an Ambush edition by Francis Clifford Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks

Francis Clifford was a best-selling English novelist in the 1950's and 1960's who specialised in human drama and Cold War spy fiction. He is probably best known for The Running Man, a novel that was turned into a movie starring Frank Sinatra. However since his death in the 1970's, his works have sunk into undeserved obscurity. His Wikipedia entry, for example, is only a couple of lines long and gives no real indication of his one-time popularity.

I first encountered Time Is An Ambush [1962] soon after it was published and it was a pleasure to re-read this novel in Kindle format after 50 years.

The tale is set in a seaside town on the Spanish coast around 1959-60 at time when General Franco was in power and Spain was still recovering from the economic and social fall out of the Spanish Civil War. The core story is simply told: an English author [into whose character it is temptingly easy to project Clifford] makes a chance encounter with a young and attractive German woman who is visiting the area with her older, somewhat abrasive and arrogant husband. In the short space of a week, a short-lived physical affair followed by a surprise tragedy and a delayering of a moral crisis races through the pages of this page-turning read.

What I liked:
1. The evocative descriptive passages: Clifford captures the scenery and ambiance of Franco's Spain really well.
2. Tyler - the socially awkward and conflicted lead character - is well drawn for the most part. He is never meant to be likeable and is presented as someone carrying troubled psychological baggage traceable to his WW2 experiences of which the only concrete fact to emerge is that his wife died in a German air raid. [Note that many contemporary British novelists took WW2 as a central reference point for their plots and characters: Clifford is thus no exception.]
3. The core story line is relatively direct and runs pretty much like a 1950's screen play [which I suspect was one of the goals Clifford had in mind - but who knows?]. This makes it the perfect novel to blitz though on a wet New Zealand weekend, as I did.
4. Tyler's moral conflict is delightfully quaint for modern readers to experience: does he want The Girl [at the price of the truth] or The Truth [and lose the girl]? Again, I suspect that most 38-year old men in 2012 would find this a very easy circle to square and they would do so with more devious finesse than Tyler's gauche character. It really is charming.

What May Put Readers Off:
1. Uneven characterisation. Tyler is finely drawn and he is shown to be an adroit verbal and social fencer with everyone from a somewhat sinister Civil Guard commander through to a mysterious fugitive. However he is relatively inept at expressing himself to Ilse - his yearned-for love interest. Ilse herself is a key character but, neat physical descriptions aside, Clifford does little to make her anything more than a poorly developed figure who we do not get to know at all well. I found this frustrating and suspect that modern readers of both genders would feel this way too.
2. Somewhat uneven pace. There are times when the passages linger long on certain events and descriptions; at which moments it seemed to this reviewer the author was consulting his My-Visit-To-Spain notebooks closely to extract every last drop from their contents. Yet at other moments, the pace was almost too fast for the importance of the scene and it whizzed through such key events far too quickly.

Summing up:
It is easy to see why Francis Clifford was a best-selling novelist in his day - he does write well for his target audience. Personally, I do not begrudge spending the modest sum it cost to download this engaging novel. Yes it has a few faults but these do not greatly detract from a work that draws you in from the first page and keeps you there all the way through. It never chugs and would make a darn fine distraction for a slow weekend or tedious train or air journey. I liked it very well indeed.


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Time is an Ambush edition by Francis Clifford Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews

Francis Clifford was a best-selling English novelist in the 1950's and 1960's who specialised in human drama and Cold War spy fiction. He is probably best known for The Running Man, a novel that was turned into a movie starring Frank Sinatra. However since his death in the 1970's, his works have sunk into undeserved obscurity. His Wikipedia entry, for example, is only a couple of lines long and gives no real indication of his one-time popularity.

I first encountered Time Is An Ambush [1962] soon after it was published and it was a pleasure to re-read this novel in format after 50 years.

The tale is set in a seaside town on the Spanish coast around 1959-60 at time when General Franco was in power and Spain was still recovering from the economic and social fall out of the Spanish Civil War. The core story is simply told an English author [into whose character it is temptingly easy to project Clifford] makes a chance encounter with a young and attractive German woman who is visiting the area with her older, somewhat abrasive and arrogant husband. In the short space of a week, a short-lived physical affair followed by a surprise tragedy and a delayering of a moral crisis races through the pages of this page-turning read.

What I liked
1. The evocative descriptive passages Clifford captures the scenery and ambiance of Franco's Spain really well.
2. Tyler - the socially awkward and conflicted lead character - is well drawn for the most part. He is never meant to be likeable and is presented as someone carrying troubled psychological baggage traceable to his WW2 experiences of which the only concrete fact to emerge is that his wife died in a German air raid. [Note that many contemporary British novelists took WW2 as a central reference point for their plots and characters Clifford is thus no exception.]
3. The core story line is relatively direct and runs pretty much like a 1950's screen play [which I suspect was one of the goals Clifford had in mind - but who knows?]. This makes it the perfect novel to blitz though on a wet New Zealand weekend, as I did.
4. Tyler's moral conflict is delightfully quaint for modern readers to experience does he want The Girl [at the price of the truth] or The Truth [and lose the girl]? Again, I suspect that most 38-year old men in 2012 would find this a very easy circle to square and they would do so with more devious finesse than Tyler's gauche character. It really is charming.

What May Put Readers Off
1. Uneven characterisation. Tyler is finely drawn and he is shown to be an adroit verbal and social fencer with everyone from a somewhat sinister Civil Guard commander through to a mysterious fugitive. However he is relatively inept at expressing himself to Ilse - his yearned-for love interest. Ilse herself is a key character but, neat physical descriptions aside, Clifford does little to make her anything more than a poorly developed figure who we do not get to know at all well. I found this frustrating and suspect that modern readers of both genders would feel this way too.
2. Somewhat uneven pace. There are times when the passages linger long on certain events and descriptions; at which moments it seemed to this reviewer the author was consulting his My-Visit-To-Spain notebooks closely to extract every last drop from their contents. Yet at other moments, the pace was almost too fast for the importance of the scene and it whizzed through such key events far too quickly.

Summing up
It is easy to see why Francis Clifford was a best-selling novelist in his day - he does write well for his target audience. Personally, I do not begrudge spending the modest sum it cost to download this engaging novel. Yes it has a few faults but these do not greatly detract from a work that draws you in from the first page and keeps you there all the way through. It never chugs and would make a darn fine distraction for a slow weekend or tedious train or air journey. I liked it very well indeed.