Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #424020 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Terrific return to form
I was disappointed by 'Dark Voyage', thought that 'The Foreign Correspondent' was a slight improvement, but am delighted that Alan Furst has re-found his unique style and voice with 'The Spies of Warsaw'.
It's a real return to the high quality of his earlier boooks like 'The World at Night' and 'Dark Star' and their masterly evocations of period and setting - here principally Warsaw in the late 1930s, with the looming menace of Hitler's Germany on one side and Stalin's Russia on the other.
French military attache and intelligence officer Colonel Mercier, a minor aristocrat and wounded veteran of the Great War, is contemplating tendering his resignation, but dutifully plays his part in the diplomatic shadowplays, where the spies are known, but their covers are politely maintained by all, where his Polish hosts are probing for France's intentions when war comes, the Russians make overtures to recruit him, and the competing German agencies are fighting their own internal struggles...
But then one of Mercier's agents makes a mistake, and sets into motion a chain of events that forces Mercier back into the action, as he has the chance to uncover a vital part of Hitler's war plans.
We move between the embassy salons and the backstreets, the gilded restaurants and the brothels, the 5-star hotels and the rented rooms - infused with the author's sweetly melancholic appreciation of a still-graceful Europe sliding into conflict. There's romance too, plus the thumbnail character sketches and internal lives of the protagonists, sparsely but skilfully drawn in Furst's trademark style of hints and highlights - not too much, just outlines that the reader fills in. And of course, the Brasserie Heininger makes a re-appearance...
If you're a Furst addict or have just discovered him, you're in for an enjoyable read.

Alan Furst back in form
I was somewhat disappointed with Furst's last book, "The Foreign Correspondent," but this book is more like his former pre-WWII spy novels. The year is 1937, the prospect of another war is looming, and Col. Mercier, a French military attache based in Warsaw, is given the task to discover how, should war break out, the Germans will attack France. Again we meet a cast of spies, civil servants and military officers, many of them world-weary and believing that war is inevitable. As in all his other novels, Furst includes a little romance, the Brasserie Heininger with its bullet-shattered mirror (that happens in his book Night Soldiers), the smoky night clubs, the rustic worker's bars. It's Furst's evocation of this era, the terse conversations, the atmosphere, which makes his books so good.

I didn't give it five stars as I still prefer his earlier novels, like Night Soldiers or The Polish Officer. These books were much longer, much meatier. I can't get enough of Alan Furst! If you are interested in espionage novels, or novels about WWII, Furst is definitely one to read.

Consistently good
This is typical Furst. Consistently in his books, the execution of relatively trivial (given our hindsight about the overwhelming events to come) espionage operations against Nazi Germany forms the basis of the plot. It is similar in style and pace to his earlier books which blend elements of travelogue, thriller, history lesson and romance to provide an extremely readable and interesting narrative. Essentially, if you enjoyed Furst earlier novels, then you should enjoy this as well.