"To say he is held in high esteem by his writing colleagues would be an understatement," Symons remarks in an article for the London Times. At a lunch held in honor of Ambler, Symons reports, such writers as John le Carre, Frederick Forsyth, Gavin Lyall, and Lionel Davidson were in attendance. Le Carre said that Ambler's novels "were the well into which everybody had dipped," while Graham Greene cabled a greeting: "To the master from one of his disciples."