Customer Reviews

Polish Officer

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The reader new to Alan Furst may not immediately recognize that the plot is subordinate to the setting and character development. The Polish Officer, like his other novels, ends somewhat abruptly; the war continues unabated and the fate of his protagonist remains unresolved. Furst sees WWII as a large canvas. This novel, a detailed painting by Alan Furst, only covers a minute spot.

Poland is under coordinated attacks by Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. The story begins as Captain Alexander de Milja is assigned the task of transporting by train Poland's national gold reserves to a location out of reach of Hitler's forces. Not much later, despite fierce fighting by Polish forces, Poland is overwhelmed and de Milja joins the Polish resistance. The setting moves from Poland to Romania to France to the Ukraine as de Milja's situation becomes increasingly insecure. The Polish officer himself no longer has rank, nor an army, nor a country. He does not expect to survive.

Furst's novels excel in two regards: their historical settings are authentic while simultaneously the stories provide unexpected, even unique, perspectives on WWII. In this story we readers experience life from inside an occupied Poland, inside an intimidated Romania, within a surrendered France, and in a brutalized Ukraine. His plots are suspenseful and well-crafted, and yet I recall his stories more for their detailed settings. It is unlikely that I will forget Furst's description of occupied Europe.

The WWII historical novels of Alan Furst offer a richness and authenticity seldom encountered. I highly recommend The Polish Officer. It is among his finest works and is a great introduction to a remarkable author.

Alan Furst has apparently been writing books of this genre for some years now. The plots all take place during the period just prior to World War II, or the during the war itself. Each of the characters is somewhat compromised, morally or otherwise. Here, the main character is Captain Alexander de Milja, a Polish army officer whose main duty, in peacetime, was as a cartographer and intelligence officer. Now that the war has started, he's helping defend Warsaw, but he's soon called away to escort a supply of gold and specie across the border into Romania. From there, his bosses in the military intelligence bureau wish him to spy on the Germans, first in Paris, later in other parts of France and elsewhere. He moves with ease from one theater of the war to another, repeatedly surviving when others around him are captured or killed. He has affairs, makes and loses friends, watches as others are betrayed by traitors, even executes said traitor himself on one occasion.

The one thing the book does extremely well is portray the lives of ordinary people during the war. The author seems to have a view of the mundane populace of an occupied country, and what they do or say or when they go on vacation. When they spy for de Milja, they do so for mundane reasons, for the most part, and their reactions when they get caught aren't heroic, for the most part, either. The novel is told in a series of grays (if they ever make a movie, it'll have to be black and white) with few if any colors in the landscape.

If I have a serious criticism, it's that there really isn't a plot. Instead, the story is basically a series of incidents involving a single individual, and if he'd structured it differently it could be a short story collection, plotwise. That's how connected the various plots are.

In spite of that, I enjoyed it a great deal, and would recommend the book.

Overall, The Polish Officer has more to offer than most in its genre. The atmosphere of the novel is really strong: dark, gritty, forboding. Furst's expert knowledge of the day-to-day affairs of WWII Europe is first-rate, and adds to the realism.

Beyond that, there were several problems that I found distracting. The main character, deMilja, always seems remote and detached from the reader. I never got a sense of his personality and found myself struggling to stay interested in him.

The book is not a thriller, per se, but there were moments that attempted to be tense. In the execution, however, the tension deflated way too early and I never found myself on the edge of my seat.

Alan Furst has enormous potential, and I'm told that his later novels are much better--that he comes into his own as a writer. One can see his potential in the Polish Officer, which would make a great film: that medium might more effectively capture the emotion, depth of character, and tension that is lacking in the novel.

"The Polish Officer" details the adventures of Captain Alexander de Milja, who survives his nation's defeat in 1939 and moves onto resist the Nazi juggernaut as a spy working with the allied powers. De Milja helps smuggle gold, and eventually makes his way to the Ukraine as Nazi Germany attacks the Soviet Union. As usual, Fust has created an excellent novel of espionage and action set amidst upheaval and tension- this time dealing directly with the events of World War Two, rather than the interwar years common to many of his other novels.

Although this novel can easily be read as a stand-alone book, some readers will enjoy beginning their foray into Furst's world with "Night Soldiers", his original and possibly best spy novel. This book introduces several characters who make appearances throughout Furst's other novels set in the same period of time and general geographical local. Because of this fact, I highly recommend reading this novel first, although those that follow can typically be read in any particular order (the exception being the stories involving Jean Casson - World at Night and Red Gold).

What makes Furst's loosely structured series so compelling is that 1; they are very well researched and historical very accurate, especially with regard to spy craft - as I understand it through academic experience only. 2; the characters are extremely flawed, very believable and interesting to empathize with - all of the characters and their adventures provoke much thought. 3; the novels do not attempt to achieve a false sense of conclusion at their end - they always allow the reader to decide for him/herself what happens, and they rarely resolve the feeling of tension that pervades Furst's works. 4; the secondary characters are always very well developed and much more interesting than their sometimes small roles would have the reader believe- so one is always off balance (who will live, who will die - who can be trusted, who cannot?). 5; Furst does an excellent job of setting the atmosphere of terror that resulted from the conflict between fascism and stalinism during the secret wars preceding the outbreak of the Second World War.

You cannot go wrong with this novel. For anyone interested in reading and enjoying spy stories, or stories of world war two, this book is a must read.

This novel--the third in Furst's series of historical espionage thrillers--represents a significant shift in the author's style and approach to his material. Fine as the previous two (_Night Soldiers_ and _Dark Star_) are, their main characters often dissolve into the epic sweep of history as Furst moves them throughout Europe, striving to make them represent all of wartime experience. In _The Polish Officer_ Furst tightens his focus, taking his protagonist from the fall of Poland in 1939 to the end of the first push of the Russian Campaign in late 1942. In doing so Furst more effectively represents the experience of the spy--the constant terror, the uncertaintly, the ceaseless struggle with despair. Furst also boils his prose and plotting down to bare essentials. The result is a taut, exciting, and moving story of one man's effort to serve a country that effectively does not exist. A great read.

"Poland had lost a war, this is what was left." Alan Furst's third novel begins in the bleakest corner of war-ravaged Europe where Poles waited, in vain, for British and French help that would not come. As demonstrated by "Night Soldiers" and "Dark Star," Furst is unmatched when it comes to describing wartime Europe in a detail so fine that the time and place seem to come alive. So, we are not just told that Poland was left to freeze as its coal was shipped off to Germany, Furst writes that "there was ice in Captain de Milja's basement room; a rust-colored stalactite that hung from a connection in the water pipe that ran across his ceiling."

But as the story moves from Warsaw, to Bucharest, to Paris, Furst shows us a different war. The contrast Furst draws between a craven France and a fighting Poland is stark. France may be occupied, but the French in this book (with certain exceptions) are overwhelmingly compromised and cowardly -- and, in return, live better than the hopeless Poles.

This novel is shorter than "Dark Star," and is less dense. Rather than layering complex story lines, Furst moves "The Polish Officer," Alexander de Miljia, through a series of missions in occupied Europe and Russia. This approach does not make the novel any less satisfying. The story of the "Pilava Local," the last passenger train through Poland, is harrowing. The missions against the Gestapo are awe-inspiring. The activity in occupied France -- assisted (finally) by the British -- are also absorbing. If there is any criticism of this novel, it is that the story flags a bit at the end, when de Miljia reaches the western USSR, and it ends on a note that is somewhat more hopeful than events warrant. Nonetheless, the story is riveting overall. A fine entry in Furst's series.

Short on plot, this book follows the title character as he leaves his normal life as an army cartographer behind to become a spy and resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Europe. The book unfolds in a series of acts, starting with his unit's dissolution in late 1939 and his subsequent underground work in Poland. The bulk of the book then describes his work in occupied France before a final brief action in Ukraine. Furst is outstanding at portraying individual assignments and actions, making them come alive with outstanding period detail. Wisely, he doesn't try too hard to link the various acts into a larger story, other than that of the title character. The ending is left open for continuation, which might bother some readers, but seemed to me highly appropriate. Furst's description of spycraft, and life behind the lines is highly entertaining and informative, and I'll definitely be looking for other of his books. If you like Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, you'll probably dig this.

Alan Furst's series of novels set in 1933-1941 Europe are fantastic on a number of levels: the noir tone of the book, the palpable dread that overlays the whole time period, the complex relationships among people of various nationalities in a highly fragmented continent.

The Polish Officer begins very ambitiously as the protagonist seeks to smuggle Poland's gold supply out of the country in September 1939; the daring exploits result from desperation, necessity, despair, honor, patriotism. The settings are well-drawn and the politics well-researched.

This is a period piece. Furst brings you to the time and place of the action with his writing. It is honest, gritty, and real. The book is not a single narrative, it is episodic -- like intertwined short stories or novellas. Thus the intensity can wax and wane. Nonetheless, if you are interested in the 1933-1941 time frame, espionage, Eastern Europeans under the shadow of war or all of the above, this is fine literature and highly recommended.

This is the second book I have read by Mr. Alan Furst. Happily, Random House Publishing is going to backtrack and bring earlier novels by this talented writer to readers. To date, Mr. Furst confines his novels to a relatively brief period of history, from 1933-1945. It is also a period that continues to provide massive amounts of information for historians and writers of historically based fiction. What I particularly liked about this work is that it focused on a Polish Officer, and his work after Poland was attacked and partitioned by Russia and Germany, and then overrun once again by Russia.

Poland lost 18% of its population during WWII, a higher percentage than any other nation. The damage Poland suffered, and the resistance movement it fought throughout the war is less well known than other stories, and less documented in historically based fiction. Mr. Furst explains at the end of the book the resources that he uses to bring his characters to life. He tells what are true stories or amalgams of true stories about those that never made a great name for themselves, and garnered the fame that accompanied such notoriety. His characters are often those who fought on after their countries had fallen, living a day-to-day existence that often ended in an unmarked grave, or a cellar with its attendant horrors. The risks they took were compounded by the methods they used to fight and survive. They wore no uniform, they had none of the protection, however scant, that a uniform would bring. If they went missing it was noted, and then only for a moment.

My interest in the topic helped to overcome what shortcomings the book does have. The book begins on a fairly definitive note, and then reads as though the reader is occasionally checking in with Alexander de Milja. Just as he is forced to move from Poland to France, Spain, and then Poland again, and other locations, the book jumps as well. The problem is the reader does not always jump with Alexander, often it seems as if we bump into him by chance. The book is filled with character vignettes, some are so fleeting that they are barely made note of before they are gone. The character of Alexander is fairly well explained and detailed, however even his fate is truncated almost in mid sentence. The book reaches no conclusion, and unless there is to be a sequel, it never will.

This is not the stronger of the two works I have read, however I will continue to read the books that are to come, for even when the author may not be writing at his best, he is still very, very good.

A man is hired to move a train load of gold from Poland after the initial invasion by Germany. Captivating! And yes, the first 80 or so pages were indeed immersive and wonderful - I had found a new author and I was going to take in all of his writings. I was going to be "In" with Furst.

And then the story ended with a horribly awkward transition right out of the Book Of Hollywood. To clarify: the book did not end. I had 200 or so pages to go. The main character's deliverance of the gold, his adventures in Poland, his interactions with various interesting characters - this story is gone like a whisper. Furst now takes the main character to France with a whole new set of side kicks, the book's motive unclear and literary momentum shattered.

I found it very difficult to accept these abrupt plot changes, of which there were a few more. I plodded through France. I couldn't figure out why the last story that takes place in Russia was even in the book. In between was a story (The Coal Company) that Furst did a wonderful job of building. I felt the tension and spirit of the first 80 pages again and I forgave Furst for his wild plot changes, but he decided to end this particular story in a way that felt very cheap to me. And now we are off to Russian for the most uneventful and emotionless story within this novel. The anticlimactic ending of the book was somewhat expected and therefore not a disappointment. (While on the topic of climaxes, it must be said that Furst makes a fantastic effort to give the main character his fair share of them - queue the smooth jazz).

All this being said, I do think that I will give Furst another chance. There were moments where he captivated my attention and he is very gifted at spinning fiction with history.