Recommended reading - A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler (1939):

A Coffin for Dimitrios

By Eric Ambler.

Filmed as The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), directed by Jean Negulesco.

Published by Vintage Crime / Black Lizard.

Published 1939.

ISBN-10: 0375726713

ISBN-13: 9780375726712

Description:

"Our greatest thriller writer." – Graham Greene.

"Anyone who hasn't read Ambler is in for a real treat." – The Washington Post Book World.

A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel with a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a plot for his next novel, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of assassination, espionage, drugs, and treachery.