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| The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Furst
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 941
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
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 62 more reviews...
 Before the Great Storm Breaks .... June 8, 2008
78 out of 81 found this review helpful
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.
"What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs?" June 9, 2008
35 out of 37 found this review helpful
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 Attache 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
 Another Disappointment June 14, 2008
33 out of 49 found this review helpful
While this book is better than Furst's last novel, it comes nowhere the quality of his best books. Like all of Furst's books, the quality of prose is quite good. His characters are sympathetic and reasonably interesting, though he has done better in his best novels. The plot is a real problem. A central element of the plot is the hero's quest to obtain access to the war plan of the German General Staff. Furst conveys the impression that as early as the late 30s, the German plan was to invade France through the Ardennes. Furst's fantasy of history is that the French military learned this and that conservative elements in the French military failed to recognize reality. But this isn't true. The prewar German battle plan was to invade across Belgium and northern France. The French and British, far from cowering behind the Maginot line, deployed across the Belgian border to meet them. It was only during the Phony War period that the German General staff altered the invasion plan to go through the Ardennes. In a routine potboiler, this kind of liberty would be understandable, but in a book that claims to be a real historical novel, this is a major flaw. Furst's superficial approach to historical events contrasts with the considerable attention he devotes to the hero's sex life and pursuit of true love. This book isn't a serious historical novel or even a well done historical thriller, its the equivalent of a romance novel for middle-aged men.
Fighting Nazis and Petain While Reading Simenon and Stendhal June 14, 2008
24 out of 25 found this review helpful
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 attache 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.
Hot-blooded characters, and not just for their cause -- this reads true June 4, 2008
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
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 attache Jean-Francois 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.
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