This is the first Furst novel I've read, and boy was I impressed. I had all the symptoms of being hooked on a good book- staying up past my bedtime, skipping ahead for a sneak peek, etc. Jean-Francois is not a perfect man by any means but makes a compelling hero, struggling against the conventional wisdom that holds that Germany won't dare attack France. The coming Armageddon looms over the novel like a shadow. Furst does such a great job of describing ordinary scenes; I was particularly struck by one passage about an embassy dinner- I don't know if they really served those exact dishes in the late 1930's, but if they didn't, Furst sure had me fooled. His writing just draws the reader into the era.

As one who has read all of Alan Furst's books and believe he is one of the best current writers in the area of fictional espionage, I was disappointed by this effort. It didn't have the brooding feel of impending disaster or the fine period atmosphere, nor the helplessness of many of the characters in his other books. Previously, his characters were often caught up in this dirty business by accident or even fate. Although this is a good read, it was pretty light as if he had to get this out quickly. This would have been a really good novel if he had expanded on the bumbling French general staff and their faith (like our present politicians) in the Maginot Line. Having been there in 1944 as a tanker dogface, it didn't seem that impregnable. Or the impotence of the Poles who knew they were about to be run over and slaughtered either by Hitler or Stalin. Or the disgruntled Prussian military aristocrats who looked at Hitler as a......ridiculous paper hanger. Any or all would have been more enjoyable than Mercier's accidental love life! But the author did set up the stage for several coming novels.
Hope he gets on track next round.

The Spies of Warsaw is set in pre-war Poland. The main plot is focused on procuring German engineering schematics for tanks, and ultimately, getting an agent inside the German intelligence machine.

Others have elaborated on the plot, so I'm going to focus on why I think this is one of Furst's weaker efforts. First, the good: The prose, as always, is crisp and with an excellent attention to detail. Furst is a master of capturing the subtitles in both dialogue and details that put him far ahead most other 'genre' writers. His books are supremely readable, and Furst, off his game, is still head-and-shoulders above virtually all of his competition. If you like his other books, you will like this one as well. If you are new to Furst, start with his excellent Dark Star or Night Soldiers. They are more representative of what makes Furst a master of the historical espionage novel.

I've enjoyed all his novels, and I enjoyed this one as well, but like The Foreign Correspondent, the dramatic pacing has fallen off from his earlier work. The protagonist, Colonel Mercier, is interesting and sympathetic, a man working against the odds: French stubbornness, Polish ineptitude, and the relentless frustration of the Germans and their desire for revenge. However, I found him to have less depth than a typical Furst character, and I never really engaged or believed in his specific goals, including his love affairs, which seemed driven more by sexual tension than love. He always behaves with a pristine rationality and purpose that leaves little doubt of his ultimate success, but in the seedy world of the spy, and his romantic interest. There is little to no doubt that Colonel Mercier will achieve all his objectives with relative ease.

This is the most sexually charged of Furst's novels, with Colonel Mercier coming across as a possible sexual addict. He is not amoral, but on the verge of it, once almost willing to rekindle an incestuous relationship with his cousin that began when he was a boy. He totters on the edge of knocking on her door to resume where things left off at thirteen, now an adult, and most certainly knowing better. It's not the sexual content that offends, but the seeming lack of consideration that Colonel Mercier gives sexual matters. If this were a telling element of his character that had larger ramifications and was expanded in the novel, it would be quite itersting. Instead, the reader is left with the sense that Mercier is simply hedonistic, which flies in the face of his other traits: selflessness, intelligence, self awareness, and, strangely, self control.

The pacing in the development of the plot is problematic. Colonel Mercier first pursues a compromised German engineer to secure tank schematics. This branch of plot develops nicely, and I was expecting it to be the main thrust of the book. In a sense it is, but through a mechanistic transition to the pursuit of a key Nazi dissident and the exploitation of his contacts within German Intelligence. This plot line is at time tedious, with very little at stake. On of the unfortunate things about writing the historical novel, is that it is, in fact, historical. The reader knows that Poland will fall, and later France. The procurement of a mid-level German contact and ultimately Germany's war plans for the invasion of France is only so compelling knowing the ultimate outcome. Furst has deftly navigated this territory before, and succeeded because of his protagonist's personal stake in the main action of each book. In The Spies of Warsaw, Mercier's knowledge of the larger events unfolding around him is so detailed and cynical, that we cannot ever imagine that his actions and successes will change a thing. We know his small victories are for naught, as he himself one some level also realizes. If the book was a tragedy it would be acceptable. For a spy novel, intended to compel through tension, it is not.

This masterful story tells of the adventures of Colonel Mercier, a French spy in pre-war Poland, who has the combined attributes of James Rockford and James Bond. Far superior to most summer reads.

As much as I have enjoyed the author's earlier books I am disappointed with his latest. The dark atmosphere of his previous works really set the colours and characters in a specific time and place. With The Spies of Warsaw he has changed the eerie and foreboding greys to an almost luminous white. The characters have followed his lead and lost the sense of reality the greys gave to his previous characters. To top it off this is the first one of his works that seems to be written with a lack of passion and and in template form. Hopefully he returns to his earlier style.

Smooth, penetrating characters, historical accuracy, attention to detail, a time and place not visited often! Having read all of the Alan Furst novels since discovering them last Fall, I can say that this was one of the best for me. I loved the early LeCarre, but he got too strange for me. Furst has filled the void for one who loves spy novels of the WW II era. I now understand much more about why Eastern Europe is as it is. No superheroes, just regular people doing that which they were called to do. I have recommended Furst to friends and I recommend him to my fellow friends at Amazon. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Smooth, penetrating characters, historical accuracy, attention to detail, a time and place not visited often! Having read all of the Alan Furst novels since discovering them last Fall, I can say that this was one of the best for me. I loved the early LeCarre, but he got too strange for me. Furst has filled the void for one who loves spy novels of the WW II era. I now understand much more about why Eastern Europe is as it is. No superheroes, just regular people doing that which they were called to do. I have recommended Furst to friends and I recommend him to my fellow friends at Amazon. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

This is a novel about a French military attaché in Warsaw, Poland, in 1937 in the pursuit of proof that the Germans are planning to attack France through Belgium rather than attempting to cross the Maginot Line. It was a fast read but, I must confess, I was not overly impressed by the writing style. Why? I'm not sure. There were places the writing seemed juvenile while other places were excellent; places the writing was exciting while other places bogged down.

I found "Spies" to be interesting and well written, but was disappointed by its rather abrupt conclusion. I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop (with respect to Mercier's spying activities and the discovery thereof by the SS), but it never did.

The book could have easily accommodated another 100 pages of narrative

Prior to World War II, most people either thought that Hitler and his generals were intent on world domination based on using any tool available or that these were reasonable people who could be persuaded to go elsewhere if you cut a deal with them. In between those views were the French, who thought that their Maginot Line could stop the Germans at the border in any future European war. Those who bet that Hitler and his generals were serious were right.

This book examines those perspectives from the vantage point of the Western spies operating in Warsaw in 1937 and 1938. The fictional Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier steals enough secrets to come to the right conclusion about what France faces. In the process, you learn a lot about spy tradecraft in that era and how the various countries oriented to one another.

The book has an oddly cold tone, as though this story was written in an attempt to keep out emotion, patriotism, and strong feelings of any kind. As a result, the plot, although interesting, failed to engage me into the story. I felt like I was reading a light, nonfiction magazine article about pre-World War II espionage instead.

For a reading public that likes to exalt the importance and impact of espionage, this story is a sort of anti-story . . . suggesting that perhaps espionage was then more a game than serious business.

To me, the best parts of the book were those that attempted to capture tradecraft in that era. Those were well done.

Unlike many spy stories where the ending is up in the air . . . due to an optional, fictitious result, The Spies of Warsaw ends up being a bit too predictable in leading up to the well-known events of 1939 and 1940.

Realistic fantasy

Alan Furst consistently delivers realistic fantasies well supported by the color of the period leading up to World War II. I note that one reviewer questions Furst's research based upon his supposed error as to when the French General Staff knew about the Germans plan of battle for their assault on France.

Right or wrong, Furst delivers a plausible set of encounters with fleshed out heroes, heroines and a supporting cast despicable creatures of the Third Reich. He effectively transports you into the period and give you consistently detailed characters that you can see and almost touch.

My one and minor fault that I find with his latest book is the shallow picture that he gave of the heroes romantic interest. It came on too fast and did not convey her texture well.

And yes, though well past middle age I can see why the featured negative reviewer found problems with the detailed sex scenes. A little too much James Bond a la Ian Fleming. Ambler never resorted to a Pussy Galore moment.

I look forward to each Furst book and this one is enjoyable enough. It's hardly a page-turner but his books rarely are. Instead they capture the darkness and randomness of the life of a spy. They are buffeted about and improvise rarely knowing who is friend or foe. This book does not have that feel. Without suspense (except for some near the end) and the darkness it's just a nice story.

Alan Furst has done it again. A delicious read, wonderful characters, deep suspense, romance, action, everything that has made me a longtime fan of his novels. He is a very gifted writer who transports the reader to his chosen time and place, and then lets you enter the story and experience the excitement. Highly recommended.

Part of what makes this work by Alan Furst so compelling is the setting, Warsaw on the eve of World War II. Every knowlegeable reader knows what will happen in less than two years and one cannot shed the great foreboding that all these people are doomed in one way or another. Colonel Mercier is the French military attache in Warsaw assigned to gather what intelligence he can on Poland's and France's mutual threat Germany. He is convinced that France's next threat will come from Germany through the Ardennes (around the Maginot Line) on the treads of Heinz Guderian's panzers. This is contrary to conventional French military thinking and Mercier takes tremendous risks to prove his theory.

In his rounds of agent meetings, mindless bureaucratic tasks, and embassy social events he meets emigres, spies from other countries, and more than one beautiful woman. His work as a spy (military attaches are expected to spy) Mercier travels from Warsaw to Paris to Germany and across central Europe. One trip in particular includes a wonderfully steamy encounter in a Wagon Lits compartment with a League of Nations lawyer who has caught his eye.

After this and The Foreign Correspondant I'm now a Alan Furst fan.

Part of what makes this work by Alan Furst so compelling is the setting, Warsaw on the eve of World War II. Every knowlegeable reader knows what will happen in less than two years and one cannot shed the great foreboding that all these people are doomed in one way or another. Colonel Mercier is the French military attache in Warsaw assigned to gather what intelligence he can on Poland's and France's mutual threat Germany. He is convinced that France's next threat will come from Germany through the Ardennes (around the Maginot Line) on the treads of Heinz Guderian's panzers. This is contrary to conventional French military thinking and Mercier takes tremendous risks to prove his theory.

In his rounds of agent meetings, mindless bureaucratic tasks, and embassy social events he meets emigres, spies from other countries, and more than one beautiful woman. His work as a spy (military attaches are expected to spy) Mercier travels from Warsaw to Paris to Germany and across central Europe. One trip in particular includes a wonderfully steamy encounter in a Wagon Lits compartment with a League of Nations lawyer who has caught his eye.

After this and The Foreign Correspondant I'm now a Alan Furst fan.

Alan Furst has carved out a niche for himself with espionage thrillers set in the Eastern Europe of the 1930s.

"The Spies Of Warsaw" takes place in the Warsaw in 1937. The city is crawling with German, Soviet, French and other spies, many of whom have a cover as diplomats. Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, the protagonist of the novel, is the military attache at the French embassy.

A career officer in the French Army and battle-scarred veteran of two wars, Mercier feels he has reached the end of the line, stuck in what he perceives as an unchallenging assignment - attending diplomatic functions and handling spies. He is in his mid-forties, a widower for three years and of a noble, but increasing financially strained background.

Furst paints a compelling picture of a Europe being pushed to war by Hitler, but unwilling to confront the dictator. Mercier sees what is on the horizon and fears for the future.

Bit by bit, Mercier becomes more engaged with his work and has some reasonably exciting adventures in the course of it. There's no shortage of both heroes and villains.

"The Spies Of Warsaw" is a bit weaker than other Furst novels. It has a feeling of being padded with atmospherics, like the scenes that take place on trains, with an abundance of detail about the compartment, the stations, the locomotives and so on. Unusally for Furst,there is a lot of sex in this novel. That seems to be a trend in thrillers lately - interludes of passionate sex in between the spying and mayhem making. Furst handles it reasonably well, but it still distracts from the story.

The pacing of nearly all Furst novels is a bit on the slow side, reflecting the nature of European society in the 1930s. But there is substantial substance to Furst's characters. Mercier is the primary character and has considerable depth, much more than any of the other characters, some of whom are rather flat.

The plot holds together well as Mercier goes from being the reluctant military attache to an active participant in some substantial espionage schemes.

Like most Furst novels, the climax is somewhat anti-climatic. You know that Europe is doomed to war in a few years, but you don't know what will become of Mercier and the other characters.

Overall, though a bit weaker than previous Furst novels, "The Spies Of Warsaw" is an engaging espionage tale. It's a bit dark and moody, which is typical of Furst. A solid read.

Jerry

Really Alan, you must stop churning out books every two years. You simply are in danger of being "written out". Or is it your publishers who are pushing you to crank 'em out?


I have read ALL of Furst's books, and consider his early works to be some of the best novels that I've ever read.

Not so his past two or three, including "The Spies of Warsaw". More and more, he is taking short cuts with characterizations, leaving plot lines hanging, spending far too much time describing cocktail party or restaurant menus (and if he tells the story about the bullet hole in the mirror at Heiningers AGAIN, I will throw the book against the wall).

(I also found the random and unnecessary childhood "scene" with Mercier and his cousin Albertine quite creepy).

So Alan ---- take some time off, and perhaps reread your own early books to refresh your memory on how to write a truly good story.

As another reviewer said, this is not a spy novel but a novel about spies. As usual Furst gets the atmospherics right as he evokes the world of the "spies of Warsaw" in 1937, when the world seems inexorably sliding to war. These people are very real and very human. Here the tale centers around whether disreputable tasks can be done with some decency and honor or not. This is a beautifully done morality tale, with perhaps some application to other walks of life.

Jean-Francois Mercier, a French lieutenant-colonel recently posted as military attache' in the French embassy in Warsaw, does not like his job. Warsaw in 1937 is a hotbed of espionage, with Poland doubly threatened by its massive and belligerent neighbors, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The diplomatic community is heavily involved in spying, scrambling for information to provide an edge in what appears to be a forthcoming European war. In Mercier's case, it means that the game now goes well beyond the tacitly accepted activities of an attache': trolling for information among his counterparts, visits to "sensitive" locations and occasional clandestine scouting trips. He must obtain and run agents and that means enticing or forcing others to commit treason by any means, including subversion, entrapment, bribery and coercion. Tawdry work at best and unethical and criminal at worst.

And this is the problem. Mercier is a French aristocrat from an old family with a tradition of military service. He has an aristo's code of duty and of honorable behavior and is a wounded and decorated veteran of two wars. A soldier's life, with its primacy of duty, honor and country, is straightforward and fits him. A military progressive, Mercier shares DeGaulle's ideas, notions that are rejected by those running the French Army. So Mercier's daily actions are often distasteful and often seem futile; and he is micromanaged to boot. He has written, but not sent, a letter of resignation. Gradually Mercier realizes that he is good at the work and that his country's peril obliges him to do it, even if it is futile. Duty trumps everything and Mercier is able to perform his usual tasks and attempt some delicate and very dangerous missions of his own. His compromise is to act decently and honorably so far as duty permits. He even manages to have a private life of sorts, including a new love to fill the void left by his wife's death a few years before.

Mercier is the story's main character, but it also features all of the "spies of Warsaw." They all scramble for information, trust virtually no one, pore over casual conversations for possible hidden meanings, routinely practice deception, have trouble with the "home office" (a sometimes life-threatening matter for Nazis and Soviets) and display by their conduct the constant choices they make about their personal codes.

This book is somewhat unusual in another respect. Furst's heroes are usually ordinary people who get into spying for very personal reasons. Here the characters are all full or part time spies. But his ability to create suspense with very believable characters in believable situations is undiminished. It is a mark of Furst's skill, for example, that Mercier's slow change of mind about his work is portrayed rather than explicitly described and certainly there is danger and derring-do. This is a beautifully crafted story that works on several levels; and, like all good fiction, it says a bit about human character, capacity and foibles.

In his return to Warsaw, Alan Furst penned a work that, to me, reads more like The Polish Officer than any of his other works. The craft and protocols of the spy game, the rift in thinking (and arrogance) in the French general staff, the terrible innovations of Guderian.......... all mesh in a story that has room for a nicely choreographed romance. The only bone I have to pick is that perhaps too many of the characters somehow survive the tender mercies of pre-war Poland espionage, the Soviet purges, targeting by the Gestapo. If only the world was so kind.

I'm nuts about the work of Mr. Furst. But . . . I gave up reading this one on Page 165. His evocation of life at the time is not up to his usual, his characters aren't as interesting, his sentences aren't crafted as well as usual, and the plot, well, we don't always read him for plot. I've read most of his books more than once, but couldn't even finish this one. Either the editor was sleeping, or Mr. Furst feels he's now above the recommendations of editors, or it's an alimony novel, or something, but this piece of work is so far from his best that if it were the first novel of his that I read, I'd have never had the privilege of reading the rest of them.

Furst has done it again. His series of thrillers based on the events in Europe, Poland, the Balkans and the USSR leading up to and including World War II are must-reads in my opinion. I have read them all to date and each one offers a new perspective on this conflict. He examines the moral complexities of living in that horrific period of our history through the eyes of participants with whom we can identify, people who manage to make morally appropriate decisions under the worst of circumstances. Furst leaves me feeling optimistic about the ability of the human species to survive horrors with their goodness intact.

Alan Furst's latest,"The Spies of Warsaw", displays the same telling detail of people on the street that clarifies the plot and absorbs the reader into his complex espionage tales of pre-WW2 Europe. But alas, it is getting a little formulaic, and almost predictable which was never an earlier problem with his genre. Perhaps he has written it too soon, too quickly following his previous great successes. In "Spies of Warsaw" the aristocratic French spymaster beds the aristocratic lady of intrigue in Warsaw. Et alors? His field adventures measuring and documenting the Germans' preparations to run their tanks through the Ardennes into France,
intelligence that the hidebound French high command disastrously ignores, belabor the obvious. Furst seems to be writing under a tight deadline, and producing more of a thinner, movie script outline than his usual dense, compelling narrative. For those unfamiliar with Furst's works, though, read it for the coloration it provides - and then go read his earlier stuff.

Alan Furst and Charles McCarry are the two best spy novelists writing today. Neither of them write books with an excess of action, yet both write gripping page turners, capable of creating suspense and menace by virtue of something as commonplace as a late train. They also write books which are more than just pop fiction. Both of them have heroes who are not the best athletes or the smartest guys or the best equipped; what makes their protagonists special is their character.

Alan Furst's heroes do their best, fighting against the unspeakable evils of Naziism and Communism, as well as their own complacent bureaucracies. Furst captures the mood of Europe between the wars and his careful research of the geography and the social milieu creates the feeling, more than one finds in most other novels, that one is not only reading something that actually happened, but that it happened to the reader or to friends of the reader.

The Spies of Warsaw is Furst at his best. An aristocratic French colonel sniffs out the German plans for a blitzkreig through the Ardennes, but has trouble convincing French intelligence of the value of what he has discovered.

Perhaps it is because I have read most of Furst's books as they came out rather than all at once, but for the first time, I came to realize that all of his books are linked, that the same places, and sometimes, the same people, appear in otherwise unrelated books. The feeling you get if you read all of his books is of a small army of people fighting to stop an onrushing Holocaust. Like a city's subway system, each of his characters and novels run along their own tracks, sometimes intersecting with another, pushing on in their own missions, but all serving the same cause.

The result in enthralling and the more Furst novels that get written, the more the reader feels that he is privy to the secrets of a band of patriots, good people all, fighting to slow the inevitable.

The reviewer below puts it so succinctly, "Furst's best works have already been written". Yes, the atmosphere of pre-war Mittel Europa is as well-evoked as ever but where is the narrative drive and the tension? Has Furst now largely lost interest in action and suspense or is it that he's lost the ability to create them?
Night Soldiers and Dark Star are two of the finest genre novels I've ever read. Spies of Warsaw, in comparison, is thin stuff.

I thought that this book was very realistic. It described the kind of people who were very influential in helping the Allies win the war. Alan Furst is definitely an expert in this type of genre.

This book falls well short of Night Soldiers, Dark Star and Polish Officer. The storyline in Spies of Warsaw is weak and lacks suspense. I miss the cat-and-mouse feints of Furst's earlier works.

This book falls way short of Night Soldiers, Dark Star and Polish Officer. The storyline in Spies of Warsaw is very weak. There simply isn't any intensity and, quite frankly, much to even review. I miss the cat-and-mouse feints of his earlier works.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In his latest novel, Furst takes on the byzantine world of espionage in interwar Warsaw. It's Casablanca without the palm trees and sand. Everyone has an agenda, and everyone is trying to get the goods on everyone else. Among these are the aristocratic french military attache Colonel Mercier. He comes from a long line of 'Chevalier (Knights of the King)' and is himself a decorated aviator from WW1. His job in Warsaw is to gather information on what the Germans plan to do vis a vis France.

While wandering through the embassy parties in Warsaw (like Jean Valjean) he encounters spies who want to recruit him, spies who want to kill him, spies who want them to smuggle them out of Poland; and the love of his life (a lawyer for the League of Nations). To all this Jean-Francois is so suave and cool, he makes James Bond look like 'Inspector Clouseau'.

It's an enjoyable read, and shines a spotlight on the little known 'Black Front' that had fought Hitler and the SA for control of the Nazi Party and lost. Good Read.

This is my first time reading one of Alan Furst's books and I am very impressed. "The Spies of Warsaw" is something that grabs you by the hand and takes on a ride through the world of espionage. I like the angle of the story: What if the French didn't concentrate their defenses on the Maginot Line?

Mr. Furst also draws very exact characters and every one had their personality shine. I also was impressed that every part is a buildup to the climax and I could feel the tension and the frustration. There is no fluff in this book. It has certainly made me decide to read his other books as well.

Absolutely excellent vintage Alan Furst --- what we call "atmospherics", but what is really an historical novelist at his very best....brief paragraphs, vignettes, descriptives, which make an entire lost place, era, and people seem to live again, however ghostly, however distant.
Warsaw in 1937, elderly Polish aristocrats who remember parents in the Napoleonic Wars, even as modern spies try to ferret out the numbers and types of tanks the Germans have built and whether the Poles will purchase enough mediocre French tanks to counter them.
And the ending already so certain, so clearly known by us as we try to imagine the moment before it all began to end....Alan Furst is so deeply steeped now, after a lifetime of study, in the detail of the time that it is difficult to imagine that he did not actually live then and there, that these are not his own personal recollections and memories.
The plot is there, the thriller aspect is there, but the reason to read it, spellbound and captured, is because it is the only way we can truly imagine what it was like to live in a world on its way to such tragedy, and the only way to understand the world we now live in and how each daily headline of war, death, and destruction, truly fits into the skein of history's dark and deep web.
In other words, really really good stuff!

Alan Furst is a well-known writer of the literary espionage thriller and his newest installment, The Spies of Warsaw, is true to the genre. An anthropologist by training, Furst's attention to the detail of life and place of his characters pays off in unforgettable descriptions of the Easter European country, particularly its capital city in the years shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. But the book is missing something, quite possibly a good plot, which, after all, is the heart of all espionage thrillers, and the missing element leaves the reader ultimately unsatisfied.

The story begins with the arrival of a German engineer who comes to Warsaw to meet with his French handler Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier and hand over plans for a German tank. But on the way back, the engineer suffers from intense anxiety. Soon enough he comes to the attention of the Gestapo, which then takes aim at the French Colonel himself in a deluded plot to kill him. This hint of mortal danger is just enough to carry the reader through the book, but it is ultimately not strong enough to create a compelling reading.

While Furst does create unforgettable portrayals of the people and places of interwar Warsaw, he does not go deep enough into the lives of his characters to create an organic sense of purpose and relevance to their struggles. This is, perhaps, due to the fact that Furst takes as his protagonist a man who is merely passing through the doomed nation, playing with a certain level of emotional detachment the espionage games between France and Germany. Another reason must have to do with the gray nature of espionage itself and the shifting alliances, the venal characters, and the lack of moral certainties in the Europe of the era. Whatever it is, in the end it detracts from readers interest.
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Consistent with Furst's recent works: great settings are created, atmosphere this reader could feel, characters with human qualities and failings, and villians that make me want to take a shower. Furst's use of language reminds me of LeCarre. Just wish his books lasted longer.

Alan Furst fans will not be disappointed, even tho a little shorter than some of his other books. He reads so much like a "film noir" from the 40s or 50s, that you expect to see Humphrey Bogart come around a street corner at any moment.

I highly recommend all of his books, "Night Soldiers" being my favorite.

Ray in Retirement, FL

Alan Furst's new novel, The Spies of Warsaw, is a tightly controlled narrative of an approaching war that will be the worst in human history. Mercier, the protagonist, is a French military attache working in 1937 Warsaw. Mercier's real job is to collect data, from whatever source he can, on how the Germans will first attack France. Along the way, he comes into contact with fake countesses, defecting Russians, and turncoat Nazis. He also falls in love with a League of Nations lawyer--their dalliance is consummated in a first class compartment on a train headed for Prague. Furst's triumph as a writer is the way he combines historical detail with cool character evocations in a style that is remarkably nuanced and yet always exciting. He doesn't just write about '30's Europe on the verge of collapse--he creates a world of weariness and panic that somehow seeps into your bones. The Spies of Warsaw is a masterpiece. Hats off to Alan Furst, one of the best writers working today.

Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets

In "The Spies of Warsaw", Alan Furst's tenth novel about the pre-World War II period in various European countries, he effectively conveys the sense of forboding and insecurity that overlaid everyone's feelings. From the vantage point of hindsight you might question how he can maintain any suspense when we all already know the outcome of the German strategy to attack France through the Ardennes forest. But of course, he does so brilliantly by illustrating the almost impenetrable resistance at the French GHQ to question the utility of the Maginot Line or to imagine its being bypassed by the Germans.
His characters are believable, some very vulnerable, others capable and professional, and he infuses their relationships with the heavy miasma of doubt and fear that existed at the time.
I, your reviewer, happen to have been born in Warsaw in 1935, and although I was too young to be aware of what was going on at the time, I have heard stories all my life about what it was like. Nothing that Furst writes detracts from that authenticity.
His plots are interwoven in a believable manner without any questionnable novelist's amazing coincidences to facilitate a connection here and there. I recommend "The Spies of Warsaw" as a real page-turner of a read.

I've read (and reread) all of Alan Furst's "Night Soldier" novels. He draws me in like no other author since Eric Ambler - and I never thought that would happen. If you've been there (and if you have, you know what I mean), Furst will take you back.

There are a lot of positive qualities to Furst, but now that I've read six or seven of his WWII-era espionage novels, his shortcomings seem more glaring to me. The physical details of the novels ring true, but the overall story arc is pedestrian. Character development is not really a feature at all. This is well-researched genre fiction, entertaining but not deeply moving or satisfying. I enjoyed The Spies of Warsaw and the others, especially The Polish Officer, but I rate them as airplane or vacation reading for smart people. The comparisons to John le Carre are unearned.

For those of you who are Alan Furst fans, SPIES OF WARSAW, will not disappoint. In fact, it may well be the best yet in this author's very distinguished career. As in all of Furst's novels, we are transported back, in very convincing fashion, to the period of WW2 Europe. In this story, we find our hero, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a military attache in 1937 Warsaw, on the eve of the war, working to uncover secrets of Hitler's war machine. Col. Mercier, like all of Furst's heros, is no swashbuckling 007 type. Quite the contrary, he is a rather ordinary fellow, with occasional self doubts and occasional spurts of indiscretion who finds just the right amount of courage when it is needed. Sort of like any of us might be in those circumstances. And that is Furst's genius - his ability to transform a rather ordinary, true-to-life person into a very compelling character that we care about. Toss in an evolving romantic affair (done with the taste and style we expect from Furst) and you have a very good read. And well-researched history, to boot.

Along the way, we are treated to Furst's most powerful attribute as a writer - his literary skill in description that places the reader precisely into the time, place and circumstance. Who can not admire passages such as, "The truck, not much bigger than a car . . . had faded into the color of a gray cloud, the seat a horsehair blanket atop crushed springs, the two dials on the dashboard frozen in middle age."

There's a familiarity about a Furst novel, like sitting with an old friend and a cup of tea on a rainy afternoon - or stopping in at the "Brasserie Heininger" in Paris for the "choucroute" (extra frankfurter, please) in booth number 14, the one with the bullet hole in the mirror.

SPIES OF WARSAW, is very highly recommended.

Douglas W. Jacobson
Author, Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II

This book and the characters are a little disappointing for me. Based upon the rating of 4.5 stars I expected the book to be a page turner for me, but it was not. The book is written well, but just not the book for me.

In "The Spies of Warsaw" author Alan Furst transports the reader back to the world of 1937-1938 Europe. Germany is actively preparing for war, and the French are morbidly viewing this but lacking the will to confront it. The protagonist, a French military attache in Warsaw, is employing the usual tools of the espionage trade, i.e. blackmail, bribery, deceit, and intrigue, to try to get a handle on German war preparations. In doing so, he must deal with the expected array of traitors and persons in his own service who place their careers and office politics ahead of their country's safety.

I read the Kindle version of this book. It is perfectly formatted for the Kindle, and was a joy to read using this medium.

The strength of this novel is its authenticity. The reader never doubts for a moment that the actions of these fictional characters are true-to-life, and this novel gives an unforgettable picture of what it must have been like in prewar Europe. The characterization in this one is good, and if the storyline moves along a a more leisurely pace than some, (i.e. more akin to real life than a spy thriller) well, it is an engaging and enjoyable journey for the reader. Recommended.

Alan Furst is often most effective at establishing the period environment for his WWII-oriented spy novels. This is certainly true of his latest book, "The Spies of Warsaw." With his protagonist, Jean-Francois Mercier, the reader gets a convincing tour of 1937-38 Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, Prague and a peek at lesser locales. The streets, buildings, cafes, social events, trains, automobiles, food and politics of the time are laid out in loving detail and provide a fine background for the story line in which Col.Mercier heroically performs the functions of army attache/military intelligence officer trying to head off the inevitable start of the war.

"The Spies of Warsaw" gives the reader plenty of action to chew on in its short 266 pages. That shortness would be my only major complaint about this book. Having dined on the richness of period details here, I was left wanting more. Certainly, a bit more background about Mercier's new love, Anna Szarbek, would have been welcome.

Overall, I'm in the "Furst can do almost no wrong" camp. His writing is always credible, interesting and elegantly laid out. His habit of moving from episode from episode, often skipping the play-by-play, is not only forgivable, but enhances his stories (in my opinion, at least). I have to admit that I also enjoy the inevitability of his hero's successes. The reader generally can rely on the triumph of the good guys in a Furst novel. "The Spies of Warsaw" is not exception. In the era of the anti-hero, that's not such a bad thing once in a while.

This is a highly enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to the next book.

Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a military attache and French spy living in Poland, begins an affair with a lovely Polish lawyer named Anna while trying to obtain inside information on Germany's planned invasion of France in Alan Furst's atmospheric and meandering "The Spies of Warsaw."

Meticulously researched, Furst overloads the novel with historical details, and the dizzying onslaught of backwoods locales, small town visits, city districts, street names, aristocrats, military personnel and working-class spies makes it sometimes hard to keep track of where all the characters are and what they are doing. Furst spends just as much time on the private lives and social interactions of the spies who populate this novel as he does on their clandestine wheeling and dealing. There are many entertaining and atmospheric scenes that take place at swanky parties or night clubs where characters scope out their next lover while simultaneously seducing their next contact or target.

"The Spies of Warsaw" is the first novel I have read by Furst. I was drawn to him by the frequent comparisons to John Le Carre and Graham Greene (my favorite writer). Furst certainly scores in the atmosphere and details department. He puts the reader firmly and comfortably in place on the streets and in the bedrooms of Warsaw while capturing the malaise that covered much of Europe during the years leading up to World War II where many people carried on with their lives and affairs while knowing that "something" was about to happen and feeling there wasn't much that could be done to stop it. However, Furst doesn't deliver the character development or story arcs that Le Carre so often does. Furst's writing also lacks the deep psychological and spiritual complexities that made Graham Greene's spy novels so richly rewarding. Though peppered with intimate and exact details, Furst's "The Spies of Warsaw" never gets deep inside the minds or hearts of the people he writes about.

Though an entertaining read thanks in large part to Furst's sometimes conversational and dryly humorous narrative voice, "The Spies of Warsaw" exists mostly at the surface level. The larger events surrounding the content of the novel were certainly building towards a world altering period of history, but Furst's characters continue to meander and seem to go nowhere, while the plot builds to an anticlimactic finish. Fans of popular spy novels and historical fiction should be pleased, but those wanting something a bit more might be disappointed.

I've been a fan of Alan Furst for many years, and found his last two books to be compelling, if not quite up to the very high standard he set with novels like 'Night Soldiers', 'Red Gold', and 'Dark Star'. But 'The Spies of Warsaw' has led me to agree with the critics here. It really does read as if it was written to meet a deadline - he seems to have tired of his characters and their story about halfway through the novel. There is almost no suspense here at all, and as another commenter put it, the novel sort of meanders its way to a conclusion that really isn't one. And I felt exactly the same way about that "many further adventures" line at the very end.

This is really a shame, because Furst at his prime is one of the most interesting writers of historical fiction in English. I fear that he's gotten terminally bored with the dark world he's created, though, and is just going through the motions now. I would love to see him go back and dust off some of his minor characters and build new stories around them. Furst at his best is as good as O'Brien was with Aubrey and Maturin. But he needs to take some time off and recharge his batteries, I think.

Alan Furst did not disappoint me in this one. I don't care much for routine spy novels, but his understated tone reflects through research and shows his characters as real people and not superheroes. Even the villains are like the rest of us. The tone and character of the peole and settings ring true. I lived in Warsaw in the 1970s and 1980s and his descripions of its bygone glories have just the right quotient of nostalgia. I haved a graduate degree in Polish history and much appreciate the sympathetic accounts he gives here and in his previous work of the Polish people. Nothing patronizing or buffooonish here. Second, the world of military inteligence...I was trained in MI in the Army and his characterizatons of the people and methods are just right...nothing is overdone, office politics play out as ordinary, it all works. Even the blockheaded upper levels of the French military get their due, at great cost. I was in the Foreign Service for 22 years and worked in this milieu...Furst gets it right.

Alan Furst manages to deliver meticulously detailed and rich stories of military intrigue and this is a worthy addition to that library. Given the praise heaped on him by the New York Times, I had expected this to be his best yet, but it falls short of those lofty expectations. That aside, this is still a very carefully rendered and engaging new book, an intellectual thrill ride that Furst has pretty much patented as his own. Well worth the purchase.