The Dark Frontier

This relatively unknown first novel by the seminal espionage/thriller writer Eric Ambler is speculative fiction in that it concerns the efforts of its heroes to prevent the development of an atomic bomb in a secret program by an imaginary, mid-30s Balkan country. One source says it was actually written as a spoof of the all-capable, semi-superman-type heroes current in pulp fiction at the time. If so, the basis for the satiric humor is no longer discernible to a reader 70 years later.