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Author:
Alan Furst
By Random House
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $14.42
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400066025
ISBN: 1400066026
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-06-03
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 2008-06-03
Studio: Random House |
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Product Description
An autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers’ bar in the city’s factory district, he will meet with the military attaché from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, the brilliant new novel by Alan Furst, lauded by The New York Times as “America’s preeminent spy novelist.”
War is coming to Europe. French and German intelligence operatives are locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attaché, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations.
Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amid an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters–Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence; the mysterious and sophisticated Dr. Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier’s brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed.
The Houston Chronicle has described Furst as “the greatest living writer of espionage fiction.” The Spies of Warsaw is his finest novel to date–the history precise, the writing evocative and powerful, more a novel about spies than a spy novel, exciting, atmospheric, erotic, and impossible to put down.
“As close to heaven as popular fiction can get.”
–Los Angeles Times, about The Foreign Correspondent
“What gleams on the surface in Furst’s books is his vivid, precise evocation of mood, time, place, a letter-perfect re-creation of the quotidian details of World War II Europe that wraps around us like the rich fug of a wartime railway station.”
–Time
“A rich, deeply moving novel of suspense that is equal parts espionage thriller, European history and love story.”
–Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times, about Dark Star
“Some books you read. Others you live. They seep into your dreams and haunt your waking hours until eventually they seem the stuff of memory and experience. Such are the novels of Alan Furst, who uses the shadowy world of espionage to illuminate history and politics with immediacy.”
–Nancy Pate, Orlando Sentinel
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Captivating Spies Fictionalized within a pre-WWII Context., 2008-08-13
This masterful story tells of the adventures of Colonel Mercier, a French spy in pre-war Poland, who has the combined attributes of James Rockford and James Bond. Far superior to most summer reads.
Change of atmosphere, 2008-08-10
As much as I have enjoyed the author's earlier books I am disappointed with his latest. The dark atmosphere of his previous works really set the colours and characters in a specific time and place. With The Spies of Warsaw he has changed the eerie and foreboding greys to an almost luminous white. The characters have followed his lead and lost the sense of reality the greys gave to his previous characters. To top it off this is the first one of his works that seems to be written with a lack of passion and and in template form. Hopefully he returns to his earlier style.
Maybe the best yet., 2008-08-09
Smooth, penetrating characters, historical accuracy, attention to detail, a time and place not visited often! Having read all of the Alan Furst novels since discovering them last Fall, I can say that this was one of the best for me. I loved the early LeCarre, but he got too strange for me. Furst has filled the void for one who loves spy novels of the WW II era. I now understand much more about why Eastern Europe is as it is. No superheroes, just regular people doing that which they were called to do. I have recommended Furst to friends and I recommend him to my fellow friends at Amazon. I doubt you'll be disappointed.
The Spies of Warsaw, 2008-08-09
This is a novel about a French military attaché in Warsaw, Poland, in 1937 in the pursuit of proof that the Germans are planning to attack France through Belgium rather than attempting to cross the Maginot Line. It was a fast read but, I must confess, I was not overly impressed by the writing style. Why? I'm not sure. There were places the writing seemed juvenile while other places were excellent; places the writing was exciting while other places bogged down.
Good read, but abruptly short, 2008-08-08
I found "Spies" to be interesting and well written, but was disappointed by its rather abrupt conclusion. I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop (with respect to Mercier's spying activities and the discovery thereof by the SS), but it never did.
The book could have easily accommodated another 100 pages of narrative
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