Spy Thrillers set in Greece in general and as influences on Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun (1968)?

Dragonpol

Can anyone think of some spy thrillers that were set in or around Greece before the publication of Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun in March 1968 and that may or may not have been an influence on it and Kingsley Amis as this is something I am very interested in currently.

OK, I will set the ball rolling in this thread with the following - Mayhem in Greece (1962) by Dennis Wheatley. It was a one-off espionage novel not part of a series. The hero Robbie Grenn sounds like a kind of a forerunner of John Gardner's Boysie Oakes character who first appeared in the novel The Liquidator (1964). The various covers for the novel even look suitably Bondian:







I think that Helen MacInnes had a spy thriller set in Greece too.

It would be interesting if we can uncover any links forward to Colonel Sun or even just a list of spy thrillers that feature Greece as a location.

As is always the case, I'm very appreciative of any help in this matter.

Thank you for reading.

Gerard

There are quite a lot in fact. Here's one :

Dragonpol

Thanks, @Gerard, but I can't see that image unfortunately.

Dragonpol

Any other suggestions from our members?

Villiers53

'The Light Of Day' by the late, great Eric Ambler was partly set in Greece and like everything Ambler did will doubtless have had a huge influence on both Fleming and Amis. Both of whom were amongst his biggest fans!

Dragonpol

Villiers53 wrote:

'The Light Of Day' by the late, great Eric Ambler was partly set in Greece and like everything Ambler did will doubtless have had a huge influence on both Fleming and Amis. Both of whom were amongst his biggest fans!

Thank you for that one, @Villiers53. I've not heard of that novel before!

Gerard

Dragonpol wrote:

Thanks, @Gerard, but I can't see that image unfortunately.

Well, maybe the trailer will work better :



Here's the trailer for "Escape to Athena" :



The was also, in France, "On a volé la Cuisse de Jupiter", a crime comedy set in Greece, with Annie Girardot and Philippe Noiret in which an archeologist and his wife, a policewoman, were mixed in a series of murders and thefts surrounding , not Jupiter's leg, as the title says, but Aphrodite's ass. And again, there was a scene set in the meteora monasteries.

007InVT

Alan Furst's Spies of the Balkans

Greece, 1940. Not sunny vacation Greece: northern Greece, Macedonian Greece, Balkan Greece--the city of Salonika. In that ancient port, with its wharves and warehouses, dark lanes and Turkish mansions, brothels and tavernas, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini's invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania--the first defeat suffered by the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe. But Adolf Hitler cannot tolerate such freedom; the invasion is coming, it's only a matter of time, and the people of Salonika can only watch and wait.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7440139.Spies_of_the_Balkans

Dragonpol

Has anyone got any more of these in mind?

I'd love to hear from you!

RichardTheBruce

Maybe not early enough to be an influence, but there is Assignment Skybolt the Greek spy film.

Worth mention at least for the Greek content and minor involvement of a Chinese agent. Could indicate the shared content with Colonel Sun as timely.

Assignment Skybolt (1968)
https://imdb.com/title/tt0263545/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Kataskopoi ston Saroniko (original title)
1h 35min | Action, Adventure, Crime | 1988 (USA)

Dan Holland, an American secret service agent, goes to Greece to find an hydrogen bomb that was stolen from a NATO base in Turkey. There is the risk that foreign agents will activate the bomb to hit the 6th Fleet flagship while it is anchored outside the port of Piraeus, and thus start a 3rd World War. Dan Holland starts his research with not much information: an antique coin found in the location of the theft that belonged to his brother Jack Holland, code-name Achilles - but Achilles is supposed to have been killed by the Communists during the Greek Civil War.
—Artemis-9

http://diedangerdiediekill.blogspot.com/2013/02/assignment-skybolt-greece-1968.html

https://markdavidwelsh.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/assignment-skybolt-operation-skybolt-1968/

Agent_99

Dragonpol wrote: »

I think that Helen MacInnes had a spy thriller set in Greece too.

Decision at Delphi? I don't think I've read that one, unfortunately.

Gerard

Villiers53 wrote: »

'The Light Of Day' by the late, great Eric Ambler was partly set in Greece and like everything Ambler did will doubtless have had a huge influence on both Fleming and Amis. Both of whom were amongst his biggest fans!

There's also, from the same author, The Schirmer Inheritance :

https://ericamblerbooks.com/titles/the-schirmer-inheritance/

Former WWII bomber pilot George Cary is looking forward to a glittering legal career but a chance discovery in what appears to be a dead-end case will leave him fighting for survival.

It wasn’t anyone’s idea of a glamorous first assignment. Newly minted lawyer George Cary, was given the task of going through the tons of files on the Schneider Johnson case, just to make sure nothing had been overlooked. But George did discover something among the false claims and dead-end leads that connect a deserter from Napoleon’s defeated army to a guerrilla fighter in post-war Greece, and lead Cary himself into a dangerous situation where his own survival will depend more on what he learned in the army than anything he learned in law school.

It was even made as a TV series in 1957, but according to IMDB, all episodes are believed to be lost.

RichardTheBruce

Not mentioned so I'll mention it. Also from Mr. Ambler preceding The Light of Day and The Schirmer Inheritance.

The Mask of Dimitrios, Eric Ambler, 1939. (US title: A Coffin for Dimitrios.)

Then the 1944 film The Mask of Dimitrios. Taking place in Turkey, with writer Peter Lorre following a story on the Greek Dimitrios Makropoulos played by Zachary Scott. Mystery, assassination.

Plus Bond possessed a copy in From Russia With Love when flying to Turkey.

Agent_99

Agent_99 wrote: »

Dragonpol wrote: »

I think that Helen MacInnes had a spy thriller set in Greece too.

Decision at Delphi? I don't think I've read that one, unfortunately.

I'm reading MacInnes' The Double Image (1966) at the moment and it's set largely on Mykonos.

Gerard

How could I forget The Angry Hills ? According to Wikipedia :

Set in Greece in 1941, before and after the German invasion, the film follows an American journalist who possesses a list of Greek resistance leaders. Having memorized the list he destroys it and is then pursued by various groups of people keen to have it: Communist resistance fighters, the Gestapo and Greek collaborators.

The film features Robert Mitchum, Stanley Baker and Gia Scala :

Gerard

It took me a while to find this thread (frankly, the search engine is not the best one), but I managed. So, I give you Assault on Agathon, a Lazlo Benedek (The Wild Ones) movie from 1975 :



According to Wikipedia :

Cabot Cain is a Western secret agent assigned to stop the mysterious Agathon, an ex-World War II revolutionary, who is committing terrorist acts in Greece and Albania

Adapted from a novel by Alan Caillou (a man whose life could have interested Fleming), it features Nico Minardos, Nina Van Pallandt, Marianne Faithfull and John Woodvine.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072663/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1