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The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Furst
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.65
You Save: $11.35 (45%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 102
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: First Edition, First Printing, 2008 Random House, Full-Size Hardcover, Unclipped dustjacket, "The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel" by Alan Furst, New.
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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 attaché 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 attaché, 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 34 more reviews...
 Another Furst masterpiece. July 8, 2008
Alan Furst has a rare and amazing talent that enables a reader to experience the locations in the book with all the senses. His writing is compact, yet his economy of words only increases the sense of being there. I have been to the Brasserie Heininger many times with many different characters. I have smelled the cigarette smoke and I have heard the raucous laughter. I have marveled at the bullet hole in the mirror behind table 14 and have enjoyed several meals, all courtesy of this gifted author. And as always I leave that fine establishment as I leave all of his novels; hungry for more and looking forward to my next visit.
Start with any of his books and read them in any order. You will find yourself returning to familiar places with new people, and occasionally you'll bump into those people again in another story. Such is the joy of reading Furst. It's like being on the A-List in late 1930's Europe. You're always in the middle of the excitement with the most interesting people.
Warsaw Two Years before the War Officially Starts July 8, 2008
Alan Furst is one of the most under rated authors writing today. He is a master of the historical thriller, and his books paint a disturbing, and all too lifelike picture, of a world on the verge of a world war. Furst's lastest book, "The Spies of Warsaw," takes place in and around Warsaw and Central Europe in 1937, two years before Hitler actually launches the world into war. Nevertheless the storm clouds are already menacing, and Furst creates an unlikely spy in the person of a French embassy military attache officer, Jean-Francois Mercier. After loosing an informant, Mercier is recruited to find out more about Hitler's planned attack on France, and his developing armored warfare capabilities. In the midst of this mission, Mercier is approached by Russian spies, falls in love, suceeds in his quest only to be rebuffed by the very people who emply him, and is hunted down by a revengeful SS agent. All of it brillliantly constructed, brilliantly executed, and wonderfully evocative. Furst is a master at what he does - and one can only wish he was more prolific in his output
 Better than the last two, but... July 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 It was just ok July 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read other books by Alan Furst and enjoyed reading them, this one was just ok! It was difficult at times to keep tract of what was going on and with whom. I think this is an interesting time and place for a novel setting; but in spite of that, this book really did not keep my interest. I also felt that the author did not build any real connection with the main character. I will try again in the future to read one of mr. Furst books; but this one was not his best.
A Terrific Novel about Spies July 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is not just a spy novel, but a novel about people
caught up in spying. The best quality about this book is
the interesting and vivid characters, even the side
characters. Furst also shows that the Nazis were pressing
their influence into Poland long before 1939. A lively and
intelligent read.
Steve Wiggins, author of "Streets of Warsaw"
Streets of Warsaw: A Novel of the Polish Resistance in World War II
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