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 genre, and blah blah blah. I stopped the car and made a note. Some weeks later, back in London where I was then living, I bought the book.Now, I don't ordinarily read trash. Not because I am too good for it, but because I read so slowly that I feel that every moment spent on trash is a lost opportunity. But while I have to admit this was trash, it was, for lack of a better term, good trash. What made it different from one's basic run of the mill trash? For one thing, Mr Furst is clearly working hard, and he isn't one to say "good enough, Alan, on to the next bit." Quite frequently he writes like an angel -- for a sentence or a paragraph or several paragraphs, rarely more. It's enough. At least for me. I live for those "wow" moments, and am prepared to endure quite a number of "yada yada" moments between them. In a spy novel, Furst manages to include more than enough "wow" moments to keep me going.In addition, there is his often remarked-upon skill at atmospherics. The smell of sulphurous coal smoke layered into a city for which war is both history and destiny. The tang of strong French cigarettes. The moist chill of a Central European evening. The not-quite-shine of shoes that have been repaired too many times, and soak through with salt water more than once. The mustiness of wet wool that hasn't been cleaned in a long while. The colour of a man poisoned by cyanide. Furst has an uncanny skill with details of this sort. He clearly has done his research -- and if he is not always correct about which model of car the Nazi or Soviet secret services drove in any given city at any given moment, so what? He's a writer of fiction not a quiz writer. IJn any case, for those obsessive compulsives there are more than enough websites on which to check which Einsatzgruppe was where when using what guns to kills which defenceless people.I have read all of his books from Night Soldiers forward. Except for Dark Star, I have read them all in the order in which they were published. It is often remarked by my friends who have already read Furst (though rarely all of it), that he writes the same book over and over. So did Mark Twain. It's a legitimate complaint, but at the same time, it's beside the point. Most authors manage not to exhaust the things that worry them after the first book, and many keep writing that first book until they finally get it right. One might say that Jane Austen did this -- except she managed to get it right the first time and every time thereafter. Still, it can be difficult not to mix up the plots and characters of her books.But in the case of Furst, I think he keep writing similar stories in very different ways. The Polish Officer, for example, is so fast paced and picaresque that the tiniest bit of skepticism will bring the whole thing crashing down.And then there are the grand conceits that Furst allows himself in each book and sometimes across several books. If you aren't amused then I assume you aren't getting the jokes. As an example, in The Polish Office almost no one, including the officer in question, has a Polish name. As I live in Poland, I know how rare it is to encounter someone in this country who does not have a Polish name. De Milja? I don't think so. Vyborg? Not a chance. Perhaps Furst's editor or publisher told him to lose the unpronounceable Polish names. I don't care, it's still a hoot, albeit a subtile one.Each book may tell a version of the same story, but none of them tells its version in exactly the same way as any of the others. Some books have next to no love interest. Others have the protagonist in bed with a woman or two, but in love with none. In still others, love interest seems the whole interest. Spies of Warsaw has more sex in it than the first few books put together -- even so, you get the feeling that Furst is practicing. Some books (like The Polish Officer) include so many events that one begins to think of the protagonist as a sort of composite character. Others (like Red Gold) move at a snails pace and go nowhere. As before, I am convinced this is not a failure, but a concious decission by the author to work one an aspect of his craft that he thinks needs work.It's for that that I most often recommend Furst's books. They let you examine how a book is written, how the author adds meat, potatoes, vegetables, stock, herbs and spices to concoct the sort of stew that is a novel.I gave this book 5 stars for it's transparency in terms of allowing an apprentice or journeyman writer to see how really good (and sometimes great) writing comes about. The reader can see how much work and what sort of wort goes into Furst's novels.
This made for a challenging and interesting listening experience, due in part to the speed of the narration, which sent fact-filled text to my ears at a rapid clip. An American author, a book set mostly in Central Europe, therefore an English narrator. Somebody with a Slavic accent might have been preferable. But the narration is good overall - its brisk, steely tone was appropriate for the material.Furst took me back, back to my ancestral history, back to Poland, Germany, and the 1930s. He is good at creating a Mittel-European noir mood, but his noir is not the noir of petty criminals, it is the noir cast by the shadow of the biggest, bloodiest conflict in history. Dim cafes, rain-swept streets, rusting soviet freighters, notes written in lemon juice, the Jewish question discussed over aperitifs as a piano plays Bartok in the background. The story follows Polish Jew Andre Szara, a protean Pravda journalist who finds himself unwillingly pulled into the world of espionage, where soviet spies conspire against each other as they keep an eye on the growing threat in Berlin. Mr. Szara has a series of adventures as he scurries around the continent: Belgium, Berlin, Paris, dodging bullets and changing identities and allegiances when necessary, working to save Jewish lives, spying on the Nazis, and trying to placate his masters in Moscow. But who is he working for anyway, and why? And who they are in conflict with? It is very murky stuff: tense and full of history.Yes, Furst has clearly read his history books, and he makes sure to give the reader a welcome history lesson here and there. It is good to see the overview as our adaptable everyman struggles on one hook after another. He finds himself in Poland when the Stukas fly in, and after killing a KGB killer who is probably trying to kill him, he flees to Estonia, and then into Germany, where he is apprehended. The book ends with our hero in Switzerland, his German lover in his arms, and a special assignment for anti-fascist German general von Polanyi (who I think may have been a real individual involved in the famous plot to kill der fuehrer). All in all, very fine stuff, a classic WWII espionage thriller that ranks right up there with Le Carre and Greene and Ambler.
What do You think about Dark Star (2002)?
In the years leading up to World War II Alan Furst sets the scene for a tense caper involving two evil dictators Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler at the philosophical level, while ordinary secret agents battle it out closer to street level. Our protagonist, a Soviet journalist turned spy, must stay alert and thus stay alive. He has a lot to fear from erstwhile comrades as well as Nazis. You can't trust anyone. Europe is taut with intrigue and suspicion. The times were calamitous, but in the hands of Alan Furst they provide a delicious read.
—Florence
tIt’s 1937 and Europe is uneasy with Adolf Hitler’s bellicose posturing. André Szara, a foreign correspondent for Pravda, is co-opted by the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and becomes a full-time spy master in Paris. Szara is a Jew and a survivor of Polish pogroms and Russian civil wars. As a key member of a Paris network, he recruits an agent in Berlin who supplies him with critical information on Germany’s military buildup for World War II.tSzara is respected and well known in the journalistic community. He’s a sympathetic person but, unfortunately, he cares a bit too much about people, particularly the women he comes to know and bed. It takes all the courage he can muster to kill somebody, even if it’s essential to his own survival.tOne harrowing scene occurs when Szara finds himself in a synagogue on November 10, 1938, when the infamous Krystallnacht (Crystal Night) of rampages results in the destruction of over 1000 Jewish synagogues in Austria and Germany. Szara manages to escape and return to his position in Paris but soon finds himself in Poland and a witness to the German invasion of that country. He becomes a refugee and must flee, along with thousands of other Polish refugees. Amazingly, his path to safety leads him back to the Berlin, the worst place he could go but his only chance for survival.tAuthor Alan Furst has done his usual superb job of historical research. The years leading up to this terrible war come alive in rich detail. This is a gripping book, one that I found hard to put down until the last page was turned.
—Dick Reynolds
Beautifully crafted, troubled, complex and “noir” to the core—Dark Star provides a rich perspective on the birth of WW II in the late 30’s from the point of view of an immigrant survivor of Polish pogroms, presently a Russian Jew, who as a journalist traveling abroad is recruited as a spy by the NKVD (the Russian secret intelligence service). Yes, complex … but not much plot as such to this novel, which consists of the peregrinations and ensuing adventures and misadventures of one André Szara (outsider, and observer by profession—a journalist Jew), caught up in and witnessing, in Germany and Poland, the evolving anti-Semitic horror of that war…. Ironies abound, not the least one being that his role as professional witness ultimately saves his life.Reading Dark Star, I realized how little I know about that time, that place, in particular about the demonically symbiotic relationship between Hitler and Stalin before they went to war. Fascinating!My second in the series, and definitely not my last. This is not just one of the best spy novels, but one of the best historical novels, I have read in a good while, and I am determined to brush up on the history of pre WW II Europe.
—John Caviglia
