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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2008 > June > 29 > Entry
The Spies of Warsaw
“The Spies of Warsaw.” by Alan Furst, (Random House, 266 pages, $25).
Warsaw, Poland in 1937 is a wasps’ nest of espionage. The city is infested with secret agents; German spies, Soviet spies, Polish spies, and French spies.
The German war machine is gearing up to indulge Adolph Hitler’s fantasy of dominating Europe. Joseph Stalin is busy purging enemies in his Soviet show trials. The French are fooling themselves, complacent in the delusion that they can somehow repel a German attack.
This is the setting for “The Spies of Warsaw,” the latest spy thriller from that master of the historical espionage genre, Alan Furst. Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is the military attache’ serving at the French embassy in Warsaw. He is also spymaster for a network of spies that is smuggling German military secrets out of Germany to his French Army bosses in Paris.
Mercier has an informant inside a German tank factory. This fellow is smuggling documents to Warsaw on a regular basis. There are many eyes watching out for suspicious activity on all sides. Mercier is forced to intercede on behalf of this informant and in so doing his identity is breached to some Nazi thugs.
This causes problems when Mercier is dispatched to Germany on spy missions. Subterfuge, false identities, clandestine meetings, and close calls ratchet up the tension as Mercier’s spycraft braves the perils of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Furst made a few false starts as a novelist before he published his first historical espionage novel “Night Soldiers” in 1988. Over the course of ten books he has carved out a niche as one of the great practitioners of this form. One feels transported to another era when reading Furst. It is as if he lives inside this period - the details are exacting, his characters possess an uncanny authenticity.
Mercier is devoted to the cause but this dashing secret agent also makes time for love. He falls for a beautiful lawyer who works in Warsaw for the League of Nations. They travel together on a train to Belgrade and their passion leaves the railroad tracks sizzling.
These books are atmospheric. Furst sets a tone that moves us back through time: “Now the winter snow began to fall. At night, it melted into golden droplets on the Ujazdowska gas lamps and, by morning, turned the street white and silent. Out in the countryside, the first paw prints of wolves were seen near the villages.”
Furst’s readers should know their history. We understand what happens next. Human wolves were circling, waiting to attack Poland and Czechoslovakia. The French paid scant heed to the information their spies were delivering. Europe was ripe for the plucking. The torment would soon begin.
Meanwhile, good Germans carried on with their lives. Mercier speaks to his daughter about them. “That’s the worst part - they pretend not to notice. It’s all that ‘Still, sprach durch die Blume.’”
“Which means?”
” ’ Hush, speak through a flower.’ Don’t say anything about the government unless you praise it.”
“The Spies of Warsaw” will deliver shivers of nervous pleasure.
Vick Mickunas
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