In "Blood of Victory," Furst creates an emigre 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


Not His Best Outing   March 25, 2003
 23 out of 26 found this review helpful

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 emigre 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.


War May Be Interested in You   November 12, 2002
 14 out of 18 found this review helpful

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.


Lots of silly blunders - real fun   February 11, 2005
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

I start reading Alan Furst's books not in the last place because it describes events closely linked to Russian history. I will not comment on the literature qualities of the books as it may be subjective. But I must warn anybody who might take in earnest the picture of Russia as it is depicted by Mr.. Furst - it is not even close to reality. Some of the funniest blunders are listed below (page numbers are given by the Random House h/c edition):
-(p. 7): "He was ... a decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, Second Class" - there was no such thing as "Hero of the Soviet Union 2-nd class". One could get the Hero more then once instead. There were many cases of two or even three times Heroes, mostly among fighter pilots, who were awarded the title on explicit numerical basis, i.e. for enemy planes brought down
-(p. 14) "...and to eat salted herring and drink Armenian Champagne" - There was no such thing as Armenian champagne, nor there is now. The popular product from Armenia was not champagne but brandy that as they said was a beverage of choice of Winston Churchill. As for the champagne, the best Russian mark comes from Crimea. Besides, the salted herring, being undoutbfully popular among Russians is never eaten with anything else but ice-cold vodka straight
- (p.157): "Take a squad", the captain said... - "My sergeant saw it ..." - at the time of Civil war, there were no officer's ranks in Red Army. Those in command were referred as "commanders": platoon commander, battalion commander, etc, and those were frequently abridged. So a person in command of an army was called "Comandarm", etc.
-(p.220) "The Mannlicher was nice and heavy, ...he...managed to release the magazine" - that should be really not a small achievement, as the magazine of Mannlicher pistols, as well as its Mauser's analog, was not detachable. The loading was done from above through the opening behind the barrel chamber
Apart from the listed factual errors there are several of more general sort, I would say, conceptual ones. For example:
-The hero was a Jew and a communist. To find such a person among functionaries of Russian emigration was as probable as a Negro among KKK bosses in Alabama. Anti-Semitism was one of the staples of White Russian ideology, not to speak about anticommunism. I would not approve it - but it is an undisputable historical fact.
-Mr. Furst's characters move to and fro USSR borders freely. In practice approximately after 1925 it was practically impossible to leave Russia. One can refer for this issue to the memoirs of Bazhanov who was Stalin's secretary in the 20-s. He managed to escape only using his high position and the history of his escape could be a novel much more gripping than any of Mr.Furst,s ones.

This list is far from complete and deals only with the Russian realities. I am sure that Turks, Frenchmen, Romanians and others can find more mistakes. We can even compete in finding the most funny blunder of Alan Furst. Let't have fun!


Another fine tale of life in the shadows of WW2 Europe   September 7, 2002
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Alan Furst has a long-term lease on the espionage shadow world of Europe in the late 1930's and World War Two. "Blood of Victory" is another strong entry in his sequence of novels set in that world (a "sequence" is more appropriate than "series" because, with one exception, all of Furst novels involve different leading characters, although the books do share some secondary characters and certain locales, including the notorious Table 14 at Paris's Brasserie Heininger). Ilya Serebin is a Russian exile writer who finds himself recruited to work against the Germans in France and the Balkans. The secondary characters are marvelously, if efficiently drawn, aiding or obstructing Serebin's uncertain quest. Imagine a movie in cinematic black and white (and infinite shades of grey), perhaps with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet in supporting roles, and you have an idea of the atmosphere in a Furst novel. Nothing is ever clear-cut, no-one is ever impossibly heroic. But the places and the people seem very real.