Mount TBR #52

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Blood of Victory – Alan Furst

In Furst’s first half dozen of the Night Soldiers novels (here and here, for example), his strong point was the atmospherics, especially to somebody who has lived in The Other Europe (like me, Riga, 1994-97).

But in this 2003 novel, I could hear the gears grinding. A little oil, please, on the dark romanticism, the telling flashbacks, the brooding intellectual of a hero, the married French seductress, and pithy asides about love, war, and persistence and resistance in the face of tyranny.

I mean, it delivers soothing enough, engaging enough prose and plot for flights, waiting rooms and other times when the reader is not up to reading something more deeply satisfying – like John LeCarre’s rocker The Honorable Schoolboy.