Ambling On

By Charles Elliot

THE LEVANTER

by ERIC AMBLER 307 pages. Atheneum. $6.95.

"As good as Ambler," say the cover blurbs on all those derivative thrillers that aren't. The Levanter shows why. Nobody else is quite so much at home down there behind the Middle Eastern gasworks where the real horrors breed, among the machines and crackpot politics and bills of lading, the irony and the ironmonger. Nobody but Ambler is quite so willing to risk boring us with the crucial facts--why the Russian rocket needs a special mounting flange to take a Chinese fuse, why it isn't all that simple to plot a new course for a merchant vessel sailing from Latakia to Alexandria, why the Agence Howell (shipping, light manufacturing, fast footwork) needs to get its capital out of Syria before the next revolution.

This time (the 14th), Ambler's protagonist is someone called Michael Howell. He is, in fact, deceptively named and only "fractionally British," less one man than "a committee of several," according to his mistress, a mixture of Lebanese, Armenian, Syrian and Greek Cypriot. Out of innocence, cupidity and ill fortune, Howell finds himself dragged whimpering into cooperation with Arab guerrillas so sleazy that they have been disowned by a Palestine liberation organization.

Under the leadership of one Salah Ghaled, a psychotic with a wallet full of atrocity photos and a rhetorical style normally found only in real life,* they are working up a terrorist attack on Is rael. From Howell's trembling point of view, the plan -- which involves radio-controlled rockets and bombs (in plas tic bags) is all too ingenious. From everyone else's, too, come to think of it.

Perhaps The Levanter ought to be banned in Beirut. sbCharles Elliot

* Compare Salah Ghaled--"While we Palestinians must still fight for justice, no bystanders are innocent"--with Bassam Zayid. spokesman for the terrorist group claiming credit for the recent Tel Aviv airport massacre (TiMi:, June 1 2): "Our purpose was to kill as many people as possible at the airport--Israelis, of course, but anyone else who was there."

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