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Unsettling times

August 10th, 2009 Liz C. - Alicia Ashman

The Spies of Warsaw covers those brief years in the 1930’s between the beginnings of the Nazi government in Germany and the start of the war in 1939. Alan Furst’s novel is a portrayal of unsettling times but is still filled with the hope of evading war even as politicians and governments maneuver to take advantage or control.

Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated soldier of the Great War, is sent to Warsaw as a military attaché at the French embassy.  There he circulates at the many parties and events, carefully listening for any interesting tidbits.  Much to his distaste he is assigned to the running of a spy.  Once he starts it becomes clear that almost everyone, within the ever intersecting circles of people he meets, is in the business of spying.  Mercier must walk a careful line, even as he is drawn further into a world of espionage that crosses many a personal and political line.

Furst has been writing espionage novels for twenty years and to quote Salon magazine from an article that names him as the successor to John Le Carre, “Furst’s characters feel the exhilaration and the burden of the realization that the history of humanity depends on them.”  A fitting description of the very subtle power that defines Alan Furst’s novels.

Entry Filed under: Thriller