Sometime in the early 90s I was driving at night from Santa Fe to Albuquerque in a barrowed car (thanks again, Erika) listening to NPR. Their book reviewer of the moment -- Elvis Whatshisname, as I recall -- was laying extravagant praise on a spy novel, saying it broke the constraints of its gen...
This was the first Alan Furst spy thriller that I ever read, and returning to re-read it after a number of years (and reading all the novels he's written since) I'd still rate it as one of his best. It follows the experiences of Polish Captain Alexander de Milja, a map analyst on the Polish gener...
From the inside front: Roger Levy is an enterprising young man in business for himself. In fact, his is a kind of modern American success story, although it just happens that his business is dealing dope around the various colleges and universities in Pennsylvania. So when he he is stopped, his v...
Red Gold continues the story of Parisian director Jean-Claude Casson in occupied France during World War II. It is not a true sequel to The World at Night as Casson is no longer the main character. Before, readers were shown only his point of view as he struggled to stay out of the path of war an...
Woke up in the middle of the night due to my cold and decided to finish this. I liked the second half much more than the first half, which took a little while to set up, and required me to get used to a writing style deliberately evocative of a ship's log -- complete with numerous deliberately i...
Oil is the blood of victory. War has become mechanized. Stop the tanks and trucks from rolling, and you effectively cripple an army and end a war. During WW2, about 60% of German oil supply came from Romania. It got shipped to Germany by tankers navigating the Danube. This book is about a co...
The Foreign Correspondent opens with an assassination. The reader sees it unfold through the eyes of its mastermind: a shadowy figure seated at the back of a luxury sedan, the silver medal of the Italian Fascist Party pinned to his lapel. With icy satisfaction he watches his victim enter a Par...
[Cross-posted here, with pictures.]It had become entirely Vidin business, Bulgarian business, Balkan business.(p. 15)The above references a savage beating, but even as Night Soldiers jumps from Bulgaria, to Russia, to Spain, to France, to other parts of France, to winding down the Danube toward a...
The fourth book in the "Night Soldiers" series of World War II-era spy novels by Alan Furst evokes the feeling of what I assume is close to how it felt to live in Paris in 1940 under German occupation. Furst is a master of description and detail and with this book that is evident as ever. But is ...
IT WASN’T EASY FOR FERRAR, TAKING THE LITTLE train up to Louveciennes. He didn’t look forward to what he had to do there, and the spring day was a hard lesson in what would be lost. The region of the Seine, west of Paris, was the ancient preserve of the aristocracy—Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Versaill...
The autumn of the year 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafés, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affairs, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war – th...
On the stage were two women and a man, dancers, in tight black clothing, harassed by a tiny Russian wearing a pince-nez, hands on hips, stricken with all the hopelessness in the world. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, a man who’d been right about everything since birth. “To leap ...
PLEASE COME, JEAN-CLAUDE, IT’ S BEEN FOREVER SINCE WE’’VE SEEN YOU.Casson stood in Marie-Claire’s living room, talking to Charles Arnaud, the lawyer. Everyone in the room was standing—one didn’t sit down at a cocktail Américain. Casson sipped at his drink. “A cuba libre, they called it. It has ru...
SNOW COVERED THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGES. Down in Salonika, windswept rain came sheeting across the corniche, where the locals staggered along, struggling with their umbrellas and scowling each time a gust hit them. When, after work, Zannis returned to Santaroza Lane, a welcoming Melissa shook off a gr...