I read this book for the European Reading Challenge
Mission to Paris
– Alan Furst
Most of the action takes place in Paris but the best part
of the book is the chapter that takes our every-man secret agent to Berlin. Germany in late 1938 ranked with the USSR and Japanese-occupied China as the most frightening places in the world. Furst has the characters witness where the Holocaust began with Kristallnacht.
One character, who lived through the Russian Revolution, says, “I know that
smell – it’s the smell of burning buildings.”
Like in his other historical spy novels, this is a
dramatic story in a noir atmosphere that takes place mainly in Paris on the eve of war,
with Europeans seething and boiling and ready to burst at any time. The plot is
well done, without excessive violence and with just the right amount of
suspense and sexy romping. Furst is especially skillful at the process of how
Nazis pressured naïve people to do their will with a mixture of money, manners,
and coercion.
The main draw here, as in his other novels is the return
to the era between the wars and the characterization. The characters are free
spirits all trying to live their lives with integrity in the shadow of the
Nazis who regard integrity as a pesky constraint on obedience. The climax is set in Hungary and the secondary
character Count Janos Polanyi plays a key part in saving our heroes, as he did
in Kingdom
of Shadows, Blood
of Victory, Dark
Star, and The Foreign
Correspondent.
No comments:
Post a Comment