An autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attaché from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, the brilliant new novel by Alan Furst, lauded by The New York Times as "America's preeminent spy novelist." War is coming to Europe. French and German intelligence operatives are locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attaché, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amid an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters-Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence; the mysterious and sophisticated Dr. Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed. The Houston Chronicle has described Furst as "the greatest living writer of espionage fiction." The Spies of Warsaw is his finest novel to date-the history precise, the writing evocative and powerful, more a novel about spies than a spy novel, exciting, atmospheric, erotic, and impossible to put down. "As close to heaven as popular fiction can get." -Los Angeles Times, about The Foreign Correspondent "What gleams on the surface in Furst's books is his vivid, precise evocation of mood, time, place, a letter-perfect re-creation of the quotidian details of World War II Europe that wraps around us like the rich fug of a wartime railway station." -Time "A rich, deeply moving novel of suspense that is equal parts espionage thriller, European history and love story." -Herbert Mitgang,The New York Times, about Dark Star "Some books you read. Others you live. They seep into your dreams and haunt your waking hours until eventually they seem the stuff of memory and experience. Such are the novels of Alan Furst, who uses the shadowy world of espionage to illuminate history and politics with immediacy." -Nancy Pate, Orlando Sentinel
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Another first-rate evocation of pre-World War II Europe:
Alan Furst is the master of evoking the atmosphere of pre-World War II Europe through his thrillers. I've figured out a couple of the rhetorical devices he uses to keep his writing so vivid. First, he's not afraid of run-on sentences, and his selective use of them gives his writing a European quality--a number of European languages, notably French, do not frown on run-on sentences as we English speakers do. He's also deft at omitting the verb "to be" to make a number of sentences pithy and direct. I... more info
All the great Furst ambience and a better plot than usual:
Although I told myself I wouldn't, I finally did break down and pay hardcover price for Alan Furst's latest. I just can't stay away from Furst novels, nor can I imagine why I'd want to. There's still lots of atmosphere and a more recognizable plot than some of his novels have. This takes place in Warsaw and France, and the protagonist is French. Writing France of this period is Furst's strongest suit and this plot, although based primarily in Poland, lets him use plenty of French detail. In Warsaw,... more info
I've read all of Furst's books:
Having read all of Mr. Furst's books and enjoyed most of them, I was somewhat disappointed in The Spies Of Warsaw. Night Soldiers, The Polish Officer were great, detailed, subtle novels, sweeping the reader up in the history of the period. But lately, it's as if his publisher has told him not to write over a certain number of pages, to tell his story quickly and to keep to his same anti-hero(real hero)scenario.
Mr. Furst is a marvelous storyteller, using history and character to create evocative mood... more info
NOTABLE NEW WORLD WAR TWO NOVELS:
I read any World War Two Novel I can get my hands on. "Spies of Warsaw was instructional,but I don't think that it is Alan Furst's best work. Just this week I picked up a book, "Stealing Trinity" by Ward Larsen, which I thought was phenonemal. I would recommend it to any World War Two buff. Or anybody intrested in hight stakes international espionage.
