The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Furst
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  63 reviews
Sales Rank: 2746
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1400066026
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400066025
ASIN: 1400066026
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
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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 attache 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 attache, 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 58 more reviews...
 My first but not last Furst August 26, 2008
William Brennan (Northern Virginia)
The Spies of Warsaw is a wonderful and entertaining read. It hooked me very quickly, and I finished it in nothing flat. Alan Furst is a craftsman of the highest order. I've been analyzing novels rather seriously for almost two decades and this one is constructed as well as any I've read.
I'm not a great fan of spy stories as they're usually full of tricks to fool the reader or far too convoluted for my taste. As you can tell, I don't indulge in solving crossword puzzles. But Furst creates the atmosphere of spying with an air of sadness and resignation rather than the usual trickery.
The story moves along from point to point without much need for rereading previous sections to see where you missed a clue. He is a master of creating suspense and tension, and I suspended disbelief on the first page and looked forward with dread to what I thought - not always incorrectly - was about to happen to the protagonist, Jean-Francois Mercier, or one of the minor characters with whom I had developed empathy.
I'm prejudiced toward books about the rise and fall of the Third Reich and Furst is clearly a scholar of the period. His spot on assessment that the various fascist regimes in the Europe of the twenties and thirties rising in response to the success of the Russian Revolution and its threat to metastasize westward was spot on and could not have been stated more economically.
Mercier, Furst's hero, is just right in his balance between cynicism and idealism and comes across as a fully rounded character. The other actors, most of whom we meet only briefly, are well drawn and believable for their few moments at center stage.
For a plot driven novel The Spies of Warsaw does very well at exploring the depths of the characters. I liked it a lot and recommend it highly. I intend to read more of the works of Alan Furst.
Outstanding historical fiction August 24, 2008
Bryan (Ellicott City, MD)
This is the first Furst novel I've read, and boy was I impressed. I had all the symptoms of being hooked on a good book- staying up past my bedtime, skipping ahead for a sneak peek, etc. Jean-Francois is not a perfect man by any means but makes a compelling hero, struggling against the conventional wisdom that holds that Germany won't dare attack France. The coming Armageddon looms over the novel like a shadow. Furst does such a great job of describing ordinary scenes; I was particularly struck by one passage about an embassy dinner- I don't know if they really served those exact dishes in the late 1930's, but if they didn't, Furst sure had me fooled. His writing just draws the reader into the era.
 Not Furst's best work, but readable August 16, 2008
Nathan Beauchamp (Oak Park, IL USA)
The Spies of Warsaw is set in pre-war Poland. The main plot is focused on procuring German engineering schematics for tanks, and ultimately, getting an agent inside the German intelligence machine.
Others have elaborated on the plot, so I'm going to focus on why I think this is one of Furst's weaker efforts. First, the good: The prose, as always, is crisp and has an excellent attention to detail. Furst is a master of capturing the subtitles in both dialogue and details that put him far ahead most other 'genre' writers. His books are supremely readable, and Furst, off his game, is still head-and-shoulders above virtually all of his competition. If you like his other books, you will like this one as well. If you are new to Furst, start with his excellent Dark Star or Night Soldiers. They are more representative of what makes Furst a master of the historical espionage novel.
I've enjoyed all his novels, and I enjoyed this one as well, but like The Foreign Correspondent, the dramatic pacing has fallen off from his earlier work. The protagonist, Colonel Mercier, is interesting and sympathetic, a man working against the odds: French stubbornness, Polish ineptitude, and the relentless frustration of the Germans and their desire for revenge. However, I found him to have less depth than a typical Furst character, and I never really engaged or believed in his specific goals, including his love affairs, which seemed driven more by sexual tension than love. He always behaves with a pristine rationality and purpose that leaves little doubt of his ultimate success, both in the seedy world of the spy, and his romantic interests. There is little to no doubt that Colonel Mercier will achieve all his objectives with relative ease.
This is the most sexually charged of Furst's novels, with Colonel Mercier coming across as a possible sexual addict. He is not amoral, but on the verge of it, once almost willing to rekindle an incestuous relationship with his cousin that began when he was a boy. He totters on the edge of knocking on her door to resume where things left off at thirteen, now an adult, and most certainly knowing better. It's not the sexual content that offends, but the seeming lack of consideration that Colonel Mercier gives sexual matters. If this were a telling element of his character that had larger ramifications and was expanded in the novel, it would be quite interesting. Instead, the reader is left with the sense that Mercier is simply hedonistic, which flies in the face of his other traits: selflessness, intelligence, self awareness, and, strangely, self control.
The pacing in the development of the plot is problematic. Colonel Mercier first pursues a compromised German engineer to secure tank schematics. This branch of plot develops nicely, and I was expecting it to be the main thrust of the book. In a sense it is, but through a mechanistic transition to the pursuit of a key Nazi dissident and the exploitation of his contacts within German Intelligence. This plot line is at times tedious, with very little at stake. One of the unfortunate things about writing the historical novel, is that it is, in fact, historical. The reader knows that Poland will fall, and later France. The procurement of a mid-level German contact and ultimately Germany's war plans for the invasion of France is only so compelling knowing the ultimate outcome. Furst has deftly navigated this territory before, and succeeded because of his protagonist's personal stake in the main action of each book. In The Spies of Warsaw, Mercier's knowledge of the larger events unfolding around him is so detailed and cynical that we cannot ever imagine that his actions and successes will change a thing. We know his small victories are for naught, as he himself on some level also realizes. If the book was a tragedy it would be acceptable. For a spy novel, intended to compel through tension, it is not.
A Good Read but Disappointing August 16, 2008
Richard C. Sovish (Danville, CA)
As one who has read all of Alan Furst's books and believe he is one of the best current writers in the area of fictional espionage, I was disappointed by this effort. It didn't have the brooding feel of impending disaster or the fine period atmosphere, nor the helplessness of many of the characters in his other books. Previously, his characters were often caught up in this dirty business by accident or even fate. Although this is a good read, it was pretty light as if he had to get this out quickly. This would have been a really good novel if he had expanded on the bumbling French general staff and their faith (like our present politicians) in the Maginot Line. Having been there in 1944 as a tanker dogface, it didn't seem that impregnable. Or the impotence of the Poles who knew they were about to be run over and slaughtered either by Hitler or Stalin. Or the disgruntled Prussian military aristocrats who looked at Hitler as a......ridiculous paper hanger. Any or all would have been more enjoyable than Mercier's accidental love life! But the author did set up the stage for several coming novels.
Hope he gets on track next round.
Captivating Spies Fictionalized within a pre-WWII Context. August 13, 2008
Ted H. Hansen
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.
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