 2008-11-10 - 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, Colonel Mercier, the new French military attache, finds himself in a crossroads of prewar intrigue, as the French, Germans, Poles, and Russians jockey for position, spying on one another and trying to discern, most of all, Germany's intentions.
Mercier, a limping World War One veteran still dashing enough to play tennis with a princess, worries not only about Germany's war plans but about France's inability to recognize them. Petain's crowd wants to build the Maginot Line and refight the first war; De Gaulle recognizes this war will be more about tanks and planes than about the static trench warfare of the Western Front. Mercier, handed a low-level German industrial source blackmailed into spying, starts to discern the German plan. And romantic sparks fly with a League of Nations lawyer inconveniently involved with another man.
Furst is particularly good at conveying, both in general and through his characterizations, the ethnic crosscurrents of Eastern Europe, nationalities with rivalries dating back millenia, hastily organized into shaky states less than two decades old, and he creates an intriguing angle using obscure but fascinating information on the Black Shirts Hitler purged in 1934.
 2008-11-04 - 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 pieces. This particular book is just not one of his best.
 2008-10-27 - 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.
2008-09-26 - WONDERFUL START, STALE FINISH
I loved Furst's prose, sinuous, direct, filled with telling detail, and the narrative had me hooked, until the last third of the book, when the writing got flabby and the narrative fell apart so precipitously, I thought I had missed several important pages. There was no grand scheme here, and maybe that was the author's point, to show the herky-jerky nature of spying in that place in those days. But a little more artifice would have gone done nicely with this reader.
2008-09-09 - Furst is First
Furst is the best writer of thrillers in the business and The Spies of Warsaw is first-rate Furst. All of his novels are historically accurate, not only in the major events that actually occurred but in the ambiance of the setting and the psychological outlook of his fictional characters.
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