|
This tale focuses on a Warsaw based French diplomat who uncovers in 1937 the Nazis' tank buildup to invade Russia and then their tactic to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. A nervous spy's impatience is the tick tock of the conductor's watch, the knock knock beat of a waiting train.
They are fine addictions. Furst's authenticity is so sound, one need not check its title and date; it just is.
Characters are etched in fine detail; a German's contact has "a prominent bulbous nose, the bulb divided at the tip;" a suddenly awakened lover has "the delicately wicked face of anticipation." His hero reads Stendhal's the Red and the Black, describing it as very nearly a spy novel and has in his suitcase a Simenon roman policier. Each September, a new novel is published and the fans of Alan Furst gobble them up.
Following in the wake of Ambler and Le Carre's early spy novels, Alan Furst's latest novel confirms him as the finest spy writer now on the scene. Furst, a master of brevity and nuance, uses subtlety and polish to carry his story.
Furst's last book involved an North Sea adventure with a Danish captain, before that a radical Italian newspaper publisher and before that a Parisian film producer all fighting the Fascists in Europe.
First, the good parts: the story is interesting with good characters, the mood is right etc etc etc.However, there are annoying (and I even suspect intentional) errors in environment: there were no ambassadors to Singapore in 1937 because it was a British colony at the time, there is a multitude of reasons why it is inconceivable for Soviet diplomats in 1937 to send a holiday greeting with menorah to a fellow diplomat, the word 'gene' simply did not exist before 1920s, Tukhachevsky was a second lieutenant not a colonel during WWI. And I am sure there are many more errors that I had missed.And the most annoying part is that most of the love scenes are on the border of being pornographic.
I've read three of Alan Furst's WW2 novels and they're all good. This one's the best so far. I couldn't put this novel down. Superbly plotted and taut, and cast with finely drawn characters. Stuck between Germany and Russia, one of the most unenviable geo-political situations a country could have. Poor Poland. This novel convincingly takes you to 1937 Warsaw, with side trips to other European cities, following Major Jean Francois deMercier, French military attache to the French Embassy. I'd say it's more of a literary spy novel, very realistic depiction of the spy's "craft" as de Mercier is runs a spy network in search of German war plans.
Instead of dashing 007, we get Col. Mercier, a sickly military attaché at the French embassy in Warsaw. Instead of fast car chases and massive gunfights, we get quiet nighttime excursions into the German frontier, where Mercier starts to discover clear evidence that war is coming -- perhaps in two directions: first into Poland and then into the West by way of the Ardennes forest. Meanwhile, the Gestapo is starting to connect the dots, threatening this source of vital war information.Once again, Furst refuses to follow the recipe for espionage fiction. "Plus que ca change, plus que c'est la meme chose."Be forewarned -- there is no heroic ending to this novel, no sudden surprise or daring plot twist. Instead of single-minded Nazis threatening all of civilization, we get bureaucratic in-fighting and bumbling thugs at the SD. Very quiet -- and very realistic, to my ear.
The fight scene outside a notorious Warsaw brothel is also well done.Not surprisingly, the stolid French bureaucrats back in Paris are too stupid to take Mercier's reports seriously and we can see that France will (once again) be unprepared for war. Mercier is a reluctant spy, a 40ish widower whose two daughters live far away. Nice job, comrade. Perhaps that's a good thing. His job requires that he attend a long series of diplomatic soirees in Warsaw, most of which turn into gossip sessions or soft-sell recruiting gigs. That's because it doesn't fit the normal Hollywood formula for this genre -- fast women, violent men and last-minute heroics.In contrast, Alan Furst delivers a quiet story about the real people who handled espionage work in the years leading up to World War II. Instead of Pussy Galore in a bikini, we get an indigent fake countess who sleeps with a fat German engineer to get some extra spending money.
One of Mercier's key sources, a German engineer and factory manager named Uhl, is passing him technical details on the Werhmact's latest tank designs. Furst's narrative is punctuated by the occasional steamy sex scene in a tennis club shower and similar erotic interludes, all of which are well done and tasteful. We could use a bit more realism in our historical fiction and that's exactly what Alan Furst delivers. It seems highly unlikely that "The Spies of Warsaw" will ever be made into a movie. Instead of a top Soviet general, we get lower-level Russian spies who are eager to escape Stalin's anti-Semitic purge.Col. His best vignette takes place on a freezing cold, dark night in Warsaw as he tries to rescue a Russian couple from the NKVD without losing his new lady love.
Herr Uhl suppressed a shiver; the sharp air of the evening, he told himself. But this was Poland, the border of the Russian steppe, and what had reached him was well beyond the chill of an October twilight." (Page 3)The book continues by laying out a masterful saga of how those gathering storms clouds impacted the micro-climate of a small band of Polish, French and Russian characters all trying to find shelter from the coming storm and storm troopers.May God grant Alan Furst the strength and health and imagination to continue offering these kinds of compelling tales well into the next several decades.Enjoy.Al Here are the opening lines to "The Spies of Warsaw":"In the dying light of an autumn day in 1937, a certain Herr Edvard Uhl, a secret agent, descended from a first-class railway car in the city of Warsaw. I marvel at the skill and artistry with which he sets the scene of the building storm clouds of war that were gathering over Poland in the 1930's. I soak up everything he writes. I was thrilled when I learned that Alan Furst had written a new novel. In my view, he stands alongside John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum as a master in weaving together tales of espionage in the pre-WWII and post-WWII worlds of intrigue, mystery and danger.For previous White Rhino Report reviews of other Furst novels, follow this link: Previous Furst Reviews Furst paints with a dark palette of words and images, and the worlds and characters that he creates are all the more intriguing because of the chiaroscuro of his world view and descriptions. Above the city, the sky was at war; the last of the sun struck blood-red embers off massed black cloud, while the clear horizon to the west was the color of blue ice.
|
