A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS<i> by Eric Ambler (Carroll & Graf: $3.95) </i>

First published in 1937, Eric Ambler’s “A Coffin for Dimitrios� served as the model for the modern spy thriller reviewers call--with more enthusiasm than grammar--�a page-turner� or “a good read.� Mystery writer Charles Latimer painstakingly reconstructs the career of the elusive master criminal, drug dealer and paid assassin, Dimitrios Makropoulos; Ambler builds his story with equal care, inexorably leading the reader to a startling climax in the lower-class quarters of Paris. This taut evocation of Europe between the wars reveals how much pop pulp fiction, from the novels of John le Carre to “Murder, She Wrote,� owes to Eric Ambler.