Cause for Alarm

Cause for Alarm is in some ways a successor to Background to Danger (1937), however it is set in Mussolini's Italy (rather than Germany/Austria) and has a bit more historical depth as Eric Ambler includes an extended discussion of the history of fascism. The plot is if anything more thrilling and more sophisticated than in the earlier book, and involves another ordinary citizen (Nicky Marlow, a British engineer) who takes a job at an Italian tooling company only to discover the firm has close ties to the Fascist government.