Josef Vadassy, a Hungarian language teacher, decides to break his journey from Nice to Paris at the windswept coastal town of St Gatien. And there his solitary nightmare begins . . .

Vadassy, a keen photographer, has made his first stop the village chemist, where he leaves a film to be developed. But instead of the expected picture of lizards, the film shows the locations of top secret military installations. The pictures cannot be released.

And, after a none too gentle arrest by two plainclothes policemen, neither can the man who calls himself Josef Vadassy . . .

In Epitaph for a Spy, published just a year before the outbreak of World War II, writer Eric Ambler echoed the confusions and changing views of a generation on the brink of world conflict. It remains a truly modern spy thriller.