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58 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Intellectual's Adventure, December 29, 2003
Alan Furst is a good argument for simply drifting through bookstores. I had never read him before but found his writing so interesting that I am now looking for his other six novels. In "Blood of Victory," Furst creates an émigré writer who has fled Stalin's Russia and is living in a Nazis occupied Paris. He is safe but oppressed. It is 1940 and the German-Soviet Pact is still working. Occupied Paris is not a happy place. We first encounter I.A. Serebin boarding a boat from Romania to Turkey and find one of the interesting realities in modern civilization; travel is essential. For countries to operate people must travel and so even in a dictatorship, passage is possible if the right papers can be acquired. Ultimately, Serebin is convinced to help the British attempt to block the Danube, preventing German access to the Romanian oil that is key to their remaining both militarily and industrially functional. Seeing the world from Istanbul, Bucharest, Paris and Belgrade shortly before the 1941 German attack is a new twist on the Second World War in the tradition of Eric Ambler and other spy chroniclers. This is an intellectual's book (I hope I have not hurt its sales with that phrase) that carries you into a world of smart, reflective people living lives as refugees, intellectuals and activists trying to accomplish something. It is your experience of their personalities and their interactions in interesting and exotic settings, not the James Bond style heroics, which carry the book. It is worth reading for the portrait of the fight between the Iron Shirt fascist movement and the Romanian dictatorship and, in a very Ambler-like tradition, it has vivid believable scenes of street fighting and random civilian casualties that feel all too real. "Blood of Victory" has proven Furst is worth getting to know and I have already found two more of his works for the near future
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29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not His Best Outing, March 24, 2003
This is the fifth of Furst's seven WWII espionage novels I've read, and not one of his best. To be sure, it has all the trademarks of his work: good writing, dedication to period detail, oppressive and dreary atmosphere, exotic locales (Paris, Istanbul, Odessa, Belgrade, etc.), a middle-aged loner protagonist caught up in the espionage intrigues of the time, love interest, a blurry web of operatives. But that's the problem-if you've read a few of his books, you've basically read this one. The characters (especially the heroes) in his books are all starting to run together rather distressingly, and he's over-reliant on atmosphere to carry the minimally plotted stories. What's worse is that the pace of this one is absolutely glacial, there's barely any thrill in the thriller! The gist here is that in 1940 the Allies are desperate to interdict German access to the vital Romanian oil fields. Having tried to sabotage them once before, they're faced with a tough problem. Paris-based Russian émigré writer I.A. Serebin is drawn into a plot to resurrect an old spy network in an attempt to strike a blow. However, Serebin's recruitment into this venture is never really convincing, and the weaving of the plot is so oblique that it's hard to get drawn in. It's as if Furst is so faithful to building the shadow world that his characters live in that he's forgotten about the reader. Which is not to say this is an awful book or anything, just that he's written better and might benefit from straying a little further from the European theater he's set seven books in.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
War May Be Interested in You, November 11, 2002
This is one of those novels that stays with you for weeks after you've finished it. Like any novel by John LeCarre, you have to work at an Alan Furst novel. It doesn't necessarily come easy. With the poetry of James Burke at his fingertips, and the haunting portrait of Europe under fire, the truthfully global loss of innocence, Furst begins with a tale that is fascinating for rich, human characters, then for the geography, and finally for the plot. It reminded me of those grainy photographs taken in European train stations in the mid 1930's when people literally ran for their lives. Ilya Serebin is not interested in war, but as Trotsky wrote, "war might be interested in [him.]" And it is. On escape from beseiged Russia and communism, torn between a safehouse in Paris and his conscience, reluctant to leave a dying lover and a new one playing the deadly game he has been ante-upped for, Serebin is recruited by the OSS to asssist in a "cockleshell heroes" attempt to block the oil route ('oil, the blood of victory' from which the title is taken] from Romania to Nazi Germany. It is a classic WWII novel of love, betrayal, confusion and sadness. Despair. Melancholy. I can't recommend Alan Furst enough. He may not be your cup of tea or shot of vodka because of the subject matter, but his writing is brilliant. You get a feel of "real" to the story.
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