Passage of Arms

Passage of Arms (1959), by Eric Ambler, is a fast-paced thriller about the discovery of a cache of arms, abandoned by Communist insurgents in the Malayan jungle, and the later transfer of the arms via Singapore to Indonesia. The title is a double reference to the novel's plot and the expression a "passage of arms". The novel is structured as three connected stories. The outer, framing story is that of Girija Krishnan, the Tamil plantation clerk who finds the arms cache and sells it to raise money so that he can create a local bus service company. Krishnan′s story of business ambition leads to the story of an entrepreneurial Chinese trading family who arrange the transferring of the arms from seller to buyer. The central, third story features an American couple, Greg and Dorothy Nilsen, who are tourists of the Far East used to legitimize the transaction, and so find themselves in great danger — the recurrent theme of ″innocents abroad″ that characterizes the novels of Eric Ambler.[1]

Passage of Arms

First edition cover
Author	Eric Ambler
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	spy novel
Publisher	Heinemann
Publication date	1959
OCLC	4081070

New York Times reviewer James M. Cain, also a thriller-writer in his own right, described the book as "... a picture of Southeast Asia, in all its color and the savagery of its current turmoil ... this is tops, and gets down to bedrock."[2]