This last of Ambler's novels is a slight step down from the superb novels that had just preceded it in the decade of the 1970s. But it's still a fascinating effort. Recurring themes, some old and some newer ones, emerge in the story. Once more the showdown and escape into a mountainous wilderness marks the end, as it had in a couple of Ambler's novels from the 1930s. So, too, does the less than reassuring ending and ambiguity that marked the works from the 1970s.

One thing is different, however, and it is the hero of this story, Robert Halliday. Halliday is as close to a professional in the spy game as Ambler ever gets. This former newsman with contacts with the CIA knows how to operate in the world of espionage. He is not the naive character(s) that populated Ambler's previous novels. But Halliday is also an exhausted figure. Perhaps he is more of an echo of the author than are Ambler's other protagonists. This was to be Ambler's last fictional novel. And much the same lingering tiredness and doubt about the world surrounds Halliday as well.

The ideological Ambler is far in the past with the The Care of Time. Answers don't come about very easily. Murky actions by governments and potentates point to a terrorist dominated world that eventually engulfs the old order. Nobody is to be trusted. And no set of beliefs will substitute for the sureties of the past. This is a grim world without a great deal of redemption, even at the personal level. Perhaps that is why Ambler made it his last novel. ( )

Written shortly after the Iranian Revolution and as the Iran-Iraq War had just begun, TCOT gives the reader a glimpse of things to come. Amber's inclusion of Sarin gas and the need for the principal users of this weapon to have actual human tests, telegraphs the actual use of this gas later in war and as a terrorist tool. ( )

This book was kind of a slow read for me. The plot is very dense and convoluted with a larger cast of characters than was really necessary. It is a very dated cold war/spy story involving the first hints of issues arising from the gulf. It also involves a journey to asylum for a retiring foreign "spook" for hire. in the end, it was a lot of work for not much payoff. And WAY too dated. They used Telex to communicate, for heaven sake. Pass it up. ( )

Murky, onion-layer suspense involving nerve gas and murder teams--the later Amblers have been thoughtful and exciting ( )