Customer Reviews

The Spies of Warsaw (Thorndike Basic)

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is the Autumn of 1937 and a European War is on the horizon. The German people are bitter about their defeat during the First World War and Adolph Hitler is promising them revenge. Europe will soon be plunged into war and the French Military Intelligence Service is hard at work trying to devine German War Plans. In Warsaw, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is the new French Army Attache to Poland. His official job is to promote good relations between the French and Polish Army Staffs. His real job is to gather military intelligence from any source he can mine.

Alan Furst has made his career in espionage novels. His haunts are the more obscure European countries and his heroes are the average, working spies. "The Spies of Warsaw" fits his pattern. There are no master spies or high level conspiracies. Just an ordinary military attache at work in the charged atmosphere of pre-war Poland.

This is Alan Furst's tenth espionage novel and "Spies of Warsaw" is one his better books. He is a very strong writer who spends a lot of time on historical research. Furst fills this novel with all the rich details that allows him to recreate Warsaw in the late 1930's.

The greatest writer of these types of espionage tales is the remarkable English writer, Eric Ambler. He wrote great espionage novels in the late 1930's during the rise of facism in Europe. Through his many fine novels, Alan Furst has become the inheritor of Eric Ambler's legacy. "The Spies of Warsaw" is another great addition to Furst's body of work. Highly recommended.

Great news has arrived for those fans of Alan Furst who thought he mailed in his last work, The Foreign Correspondent: A Novel. The master of the historical spy novel is back at the top of his game in The Spies of Warsaw. Furst centers his story in Warsaw, the scene of some his best writing and the return is triumphal. The typical Furst protagonist is the ordinary man of above-average principles, thrust by accident of history into the dangerous interstices of inter-war Europe. This time, however, our man is one Jean-Francois Mercier, decorated hero of the Great War and wounded veteran of the Polish victory in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw - the Miracle at the Vistula - and new military attaché at the French embassy and a professional spook.

Mercier runs an agent who works as engineer in an armaments company Germany, but who also develops a taste for Warsaw honey and promptly falls into the honey trap. By indirect route that leads to a one-sided vendetta against Mercier of which he is the unknowing target. Mercier falls in lust early in the book, but later finds himself fully in love while he continues to troll for secrets and potential agents. His work leads him into several adventures in which the risks of failure range from embarrassing to deadly.

Furst brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of pre-war days - the end of happiness and hope. Mercier's attempts for even a brief mental respite from the looming NAZI threat are futile; the reminders everywhere. His description of the formal dining room at a Warsaw party in the city's finest hotel puts the reader in the room: the "sheen of the damask tablecloth, the heavy silver, and the gold-rimmed china glowed in the light of a dozen candelabra".

Details to delight. A trip to Paris includes the now-obligatory Furstian visit to Brasserie Heininger and a peak at the infamous bullet hole in the mirror of Table 14. We learn that Mercier is a fan of Georges Simenon and Stendhal.

Mercier struggles to help France resist the NAZI's in the coming war that palpably hangs over Europe and every page in the book. As he learns, however, there are those in France who view Soviet Russia as the true enemy and Nazi Germany as potential allies. Moreover, intelligence that questions accepted wisdom, in this case of Marshal Petain and the ruling clique in the military, is seldom welcome. The books powerful ending leaves the reader angry and impotent. Highest recommendation.

John LeCarre, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold"

As its title suggests, there are more than a few spies in Alan Furst's latest novel "The Spies of Warsaw." None of them are priests, none are saints and none strive for martyrdom. What we find are a willing and unwilling collection of French, Polish, German, and Russian operatives in pre-WWII Poland. The result is a typically good Furst novel, one rich in atmospherics and character development but free of comic-book style heroics and world-saving, death-defying stunts or car chases.

Set in Warsaw, the character at the center of "The Spies of Warsaw" is Colonel Mercier. A career soldier and veteran of The Great War, Mercier is France's Military Attaché to Poland. It is 1937 and Mercier, not unlike the professional diplomats, military figures, and other assorted characters that he deals with, is aware that another war is not very far away. Mercier's real job function is that of chief intelligence officer. As the story opens he is simply gathering information on German armament programs. As the story progresses Mercier focuses on German tank building, strategy, and deployment.

Furst comes from a line of writers that can be traced back to both Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Like Ambler (and unlike LeCarre for example) Furst often takes an unassuming, or unwitting civilian and immerses him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre-World War II Europe. Furst's strong point has always been how he sets the scene. His atmospherics are tremendous. His descriptions of the streets of Warsaw, Berlin or Paris and the atmosphere of those cities reek of authenticity. Similarly, Furst has a keen eye for the inner life of his protagonists. Almost invariably Furst manages to convey a real sense of how those protagonists think and feel. Both of these elements of his writing generally dominate his plotting and are primarily responsible for getting the reader to turn to the next page. This is certainly the case with Spies of Warsaw. The plot, such as it is, really isn't a plot in the traditional sense, where after the first few chapters you have some central `goal' to grab a hold of. Rather, what we have here is a linear and (seemingly) realistically drawn story of a French intelligence officer and the people he interacts with in the months leading up to WWII. Mercier isn't searching for the Holy Grail or seeking to head off an assassination. Rather, he is tasked with gathering information even when he isn't quite sure exactly what information he needs or how to analyze the information he does receive. Similarly, the book did not really build to a real climax. The book ended more with a knowing sigh than with a bang. Everyone reading Furst will know the fate of Poland in 1939. Some may find that a bit disappointing. However, as readers of Furst's books already know his novels strive for authenticity. In much of life, particularly in the era Furst writes about, storybook endings or dramatic endings are more the exception than the rule. Everyone will know that the French High Command had a very strong idea as to how and where the war would start. They also had a very strong, an unassailable notion as to how best to defend France. It is no spoiler to realize how wrongly held that notion was. Furst, works with an outcome known to his readers and keeps that outcome in mind as he tells a story.

"The Spies of Warsaw" kept me engaged from the opening chapter. Recommended. L. Fleisig

1937. A German engineer working for a military contractor. A Polish countess who probably is not a countess. The French military attache. Welome to Alan Furst country. "The Spies of Warsaw" is yet another in Furst's cycle of novels set in the 1930s and WW2, dealing with spies and the shadow world. Reading a Furst novel is, in the best sense, like watching a classic black-and-white movie with a plot by Eric Ambler.

Alan Furst's plots are more John leCarre than Ian Fleming, but there is no shortage of desperate action and tense drama in "The Spies of Warsaw", combined with some very real-world espionage activity that could have come straight from the files of any spy agency. The central character, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is a decorated veteran of the First World War who discovers a real talent and genuine passion for the war of espionage. And there is the usual supporting cast of shadowy characters living on the knife's edge. And of course -- as any Alan Furst reader will expect -- there is a visit to the Brasserie Heininger and its famous Table 14.

I bought a copy of the novel early this afternoon, and read it straight through to its conclusion in a marathon reading session. "The Spies of Warsaw" is one of Alan Furst's best, and that is saying something. It reminded me, in a very good way, of Furst's "The Polish Officer", perhaps my favorite of the entire cycle.

I'm a long time Furst reader and big fan of his works prior to the last few. Spies of Warsaw is much better than the last two--The Foreign Correspondent and Dark Voyage...the former was hum drum and the latter just plain mediocre. Despite this fact, I can only give two stars here.

Other than "Correspondent" and "Voyage," Furst's espionage works of Europe on the eve of or during WWII are superbly written. One is gripped by the plot, enamored of the characters, and engrossed in the subtle, but real, suspense fearing the appearance of the Gestapo, NKVD, etc.

Spies of Warsaw is as good as Furst's best in creating likeable, believeable characters about whom the reader really cares...to me, the ultimate testament to excellent and enjoyable fiction. Our hero and heroine here, Mercier and Anna, are as good as his very best amorous pairs of past works...say Jean Casson and Citrine of the excellent The World at Night, set in occupied Paris.

Yes, this one was more "romantic" ("sexual," perhaps?) than most of the others. But it was beautifully done. If you have ever had the wonderful experience of an overnight trip on The Orient Express, The Royal Scotsman, etc. you will truly enjoy Mercier and Anna's encounter on the train.

So, why do I praise Furst as finally getting his act back together after a couple of subpar efforts and then rate it only two stars? There is the continuing problem that the book leaves you hanging in mid story at the end, ending abruptly with no warning in the narrative. Like The Polish Officer and The World at Night, Spies just ends. Nothing is resolved, the fate of the characters is in limbo, etc.

The "book" is only about 250 pages (multiple blank pages of padding between chapters, etc.) At 350 to 375 pages, like Dark Star and Night Soldiers, Furst's best works because he actually finished the story, this would be a truly great historical spy novel with well done romance to boot. It would also be fine as is, if Furst would pick up the story and the characters in a subsequent work.

We know, however, that Furst will never resurrect these characters again. In the last paragraph of the book, in just four sentences, he tells us what happens to our heroine and hero over the next six or seven years and the entire course of WWII! That was worse than the non-ending endings of his other incomplete works.

Is Furst getting too commercial, too sloppy, too much into "the life" now that he is a success, does he think he's Hemingway? Who knows. What we know we can expect from him now, at best, is a well written, engrossing story which will end abruptly leaving the reader very disappointed, even angry, at having had him do this to us again. A well written, but incomplete story which leaves me angry at the end doesn't get more than two stars from me.

For my money, read Dark Star and Night Soldiers and then move to another author who writes in this genre. If Furst can put forth the effort to develop a work of 350 pages or so, I'll bite again. But not before.

The "spy" is "an ordinary-looking man, who led a rather ordinary life" --- he's a mid-level engineer at a German ironworks, married, with three children. But as he takes the train to Warsaw in the autumn of 1937, his leather satchel contains some engineering diagrams. Once in Warsaw, he'll give them to his contact.

But first Edvard Uhl will spend the night with Countess Sczelenska.

He'd met her a year ago, in the small city where he lived with his family. She told a charming story of real estate troubles and financial reversals. He was sympathetic. Ten days later, in Warsaw, they were lovers.

Of course it turned out that she had a "cousin" who was seeing a Frenchman, and the Frenchman had a budget for "industrial experts". Here was a chance for Uhl to make some extra money --- and help the Countess with the rent.

You were, perhaps, waiting to hear the noble reason why this modest, dull man became a spy?

The first reason that Alan Furst is the master of World War II espionage fiction is that he has a firm grasp on what actually motivates people. The title of the Chris Hedges book says it all: "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning". Which is, in times of crisis, not profound solidarity with a large cause. More often, it's very urgent and primal stuff. Pornography and prostitution among the lower orders, unlikely romance among the elite.

So the driving force of this story is sex --- not a great surprise for those of us who devour Furst's novels, but a certain revelation to readers who are used to Harrison Ford heroes and villains in black hats. In "The Spies of Warsaw", Edvard Uhl isn't the only one with an inflamed libido. His spymaster, the French military attaché Jean-François Mercier, goes to play tennis at the home of titled friends --- and soon finds himself joined in the shower by his hostess, a real princess. Later, the widowed Mercier will meet a lawyer who's living with a writer, and they... but you get the idea.

And then there's the historical aspect of Furst's novels. Many writers love France; Furst has internalized it. And although I'd bet he has a list of great Paris restaurants that Pudlo will never review, his deepest knowledge is the run-up to World War II and the first few years of the war. Smart move --- that's the period when Europeans had to make the most important choices of their lives.

The genius of this novel is that small people have large effects. Edvard Uhl is a pawn, a minor player. But it turns out that he might be useful in a project of immense importance for the French --- figuring out where Hitler's tanks will attack France. That, in turn, makes Mercier far more high-profile than his title would suggest. And so, at various points in this exactingly plotted novel, the social encounters and minor deceptions do give way to men with guns. The good news: They don't pepper the pages with bullets.

Throughout, Furst tosses off such lovely throwaways you might actually want to mark the margins. Americans tend to think Paris is everything; for the French of Mercier's caste, "the Paris apartment" was a "tiresome necessity," as their real lives happened in country estates. "Nine grams" means, for Russians in the '30, execution --- that's the weight of a revolver bullet. And, almost subliminally, you'll learn a lot about tank warfare and strategy.

Most of all, I cherish the people in "Spies of Warsaw". Yes, the mission is to acquire German invasion plans, but the spies and their foils have other priorities as well. They stop for meals. They banter. They rearrange travel plans so they can spend the night with their lovers. They live, in short, like real people --- with the small difference that each of them has a role in keeping Hitler from conquering all of Europe.

Alan Furst never once suggests any of this is metaphorical.

Alan Furst and Joseph Kanon have re-defined the historical spy thriller - and all for the better. Furst's "The Spies of Warsaw" is a great read with memorable lines, arresting characters and, rarely for Furst, a group of exceptionally interesting female players. There's a tolerable amount of heterosexual sex, but never a description of "the act," and a few humorous, inept thugs who bring a sort of comic relief when it's most needed.

Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, the primary character is believable, always true to his character and --- surprise --- lives to see a satisfying end to his exploits, all of which take place in 1937 and 1938, at the dawn of the darkest moments in modern European history.

Mercier is not like other spies (such as Zig-Zag, the overblown most famous British double agent during World War II, who in his self-love was close to being a lunatic), because he is quite decent, well-mannered and does not ever shoot himself in the foot. He's likable and charming, not the ill-fitting sociopath that so many famous literary and real life spies are shown to be. Many of Mercier's asides to himself are also very funny.

What's great about Furst is his economy of dialogue. No, this is not really the way people talk to each other - except in his correct writing of ordinary cocktail party chatter, which is, of course by necessity and design, boring and superficial. Furst is a master of this kind of picture-painting - people meeting at obscenely elegant parties only to bore each other to death with their mindless chatter, except, of course, if it is a married couple of Russian spies who are dickering for asylum.

"Tell me," he said, "how are things back in the motherland?" ... "The trials..." "The trials of winter." Malka cut him off, and gave him a look. "That's it," Viktor said. "Always difficult, our winter, but we seem to survive." "Did you go home for the holidays?" Mercier said. "No." .... "You know what I think, Victor? I think that Colonel Mercier won't come to dinner unless he gets an invitation. A written invitation." These conversations are masterfully written and expose the human flaw of superficiality mixed with intense fear in the midst of political, life-threatening crisis. Of course your own cocktail parties are identical.

Mercier is attached to the French embassy in Warsaw, but the story takes the reader to Paris, the South of France, Belgrade, Berlin, the then-Czechoslovakia, and various places in-between, on airplanes, trains and the cars of the era. It's all great fun, and the calm, cool and collected Mercier maneuvers himself through it all in his service as a spy for the French government. Well, he is in charge of himself in all things except in his over-the-top, 40-something adolescent-and-out-of-control love for Anna Szarbek, a Parisian of Polish blood, also living in Warsaw and lawyer for the League of Nations. He takes risks only in pursuit of Anna.

Nice moments. Page 31, "Ou le Dieu a vous seme, il faut savoir fleurir. Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower." Page 207, "Przedwiosnie: an ancient term for this time of year, it meant `prior to spring.' The streets were white with snow, but sometimes, early in the morning or toward evening, there was a certain gentle breeze in the air - the season wasn't turning yet, but it would."

So, we have romance, good, cogent spy stuff and history, all neatly packaged in a superbly written 266-page novel. From De Gaulle to Hitler the context is all there. even with delicious Polish donuts and an excess of fine French champagne. You do have to endure the very slow beginning while Furst sets the stage with all the actors, the overall scenario and hints of what's to come. I think the beginning of the story is its only flaw - rather too slow.

Mercier, as a character, reminded me of Arturo Perez-Reverte's Father Quart in his excellent "The Seville Communion." Both Quart and Mercier are in their 40's, handsome, polished, erudite, calm, obedient to authority, smart, trusted agents of the establishment, and sought-after by women. They could have been twin brothers and, if movies are to be made of these two stories, the same actor could play both major roles - Quart and Mercier. And, of course, both Furst and Perez-Reverte are among the best writers of fiction of our time. So far, however, Furst has not fallen victim to the beauty of his own words and has not produced mediocre recent work, as has Perez-Reverte (his "Painter of Battles" is really awful).

One suggestion to all these great novelists. Why not, as in a published drama, have a list of all the players right near the map in the front of the book? The cast of players, by name and major role? That would certainly help a reader, as even in a short, crisp novel like this one, I forgot who Voss, Lapp, Madame Dupin, and the Vyborgs were. Such a quick reference would be helpful to every reader.

This book is great. Read it and enjoy. And Alan, keep up your consistency. I look forward to the next one. Soon, I hope!

While I enjoyed "The Spies of Warsaw", I don't believe it is as good as the two other Furst novels I have read: "Dark Star" and "Kingdom of Shadows". Once again the hero is a man of action, courage and steely character, when he needs to be. At the same time he is reflective, and very human. Once again I learned some history: the French general staff was divided, with one faction very aware of the threat of a German tank attack through the Ardennes forest; this faction included then Colonel Charles de Gaulle. Marshall Petain was the leader of the other faction which believed that the Maginot line provided safety. This is the same Marshall Petain who accepted leadership of the Vichy government 3 days after the capitulation of France.

Furst several times has his hero express sympathy for the people who would likely be victimized by the looming war. In the other novels the ominous future was there more as an undercurrent. I also believe the women in the other two novels were better developed. "Dark Star" was a more complex, harrowing novel, while "Kingdom of Shadows" had a better plot and pre-war atmosphere.

Although I told myself I wouldn't, I finally did break down and pay hardcover price for Alan Furst's latest. I just can't stay away from Furst novels, nor can I imagine why I'd want to.

There's still lots of atmosphere and a more recognizable plot than some of his novels have. This takes place in Warsaw and France, and the protagonist is French. Writing France of this period is Furst's strongest suit and this plot, although based primarily in Poland, lets him use plenty of French detail. In Warsaw, Colonel Mercier, the new French military attache, finds himself in a crossroads of prewar intrigue, as the French, Germans, Poles, and Russians jockey for position, spying on one another and trying to discern, most of all, Germany's intentions.

Mercier, a limping World War One veteran still dashing enough to play tennis with a princess, worries not only about Germany's war plans but about France's inability to recognize them. Petain's crowd wants to build the Maginot Line and refight the first war; De Gaulle recognizes this war will be more about tanks and planes than about the static trench warfare of the Western Front. Mercier, handed a low-level German industrial source blackmailed into spying, starts to discern the German plan. And romantic sparks fly with a League of Nations lawyer inconveniently involved with another man.

Furst is particularly good at conveying, both in general and through his characterizations, the ethnic crosscurrents of Eastern Europe, nationalities with rivalries dating back millenia, hastily organized into shaky states less than two decades old, and he creates an intriguing angle using obscure but fascinating information on the Black Shirts Hitler purged in 1934.

The Spies of Warsaw is Furst at his best...elegiac, heart-beat tense, full of the sights, sounds and deatils of a bygone era. Characters live on the page: their hopes, fears, ambitions and dreams drive the narrative forward. Close your eyes and be in 1937. Superb.....