The Spies of Warsaw - A book review

 

Read any Alan Furst?  I just read The Spies of Warsaw and found it intriguing, and so well written.  I cheerfully admit to being a spy addict,  especially of the World  War II variety.

 

One aspect frequently ignored is the cloud of events leading up to the war.  And, if you add to that, the points of view of other participants in the coming conflict, you have a really intriguing plot.

 

Europe has always been a web of intrigue, with friends spying on both friends and enemies. 

 

Alan Furst takes us back to Poland, 1937, with a French Colonel Mercier, a spy master, assigned to the French embassy in Warsaw, poking his nose into the affairs of Poland and Germany and Russia, trying to collect enough pieces of the puzzle to surmise what is coming next and the best ways for France to react.  And not only are other spies in the picture, but the undeniable intrigue within the bowels of the bureaucratic French high command. 

 

Furst takes us to embassy cocktail parties and dark streets that are scattered with bits and pieces of people’s lives. Some want to defect and others have black hearts, still others just want to survive.

 

There are diplomatic rules to observe and ignore, things that ‘just aren’t done,’ but are done to suit the national purpose. And in the background are love affairs and attempts to flee the coming conflagration.  Hearts are broken, and lives are lost in the unreadable tangle of political espionage.  Today’s friend may often be tomorrow’s enemy and vice versa.

 

Nothing is certain in this incredible story that leads the reader through the labyrinth of unlikely paths.  Instead of a page-turner, I would call The Spies of Warsaw, a thought provoking wonderland of then and now.  After all, does the political climate, in the broad sense of the term, ever really change?  National interests coincide then and now, friends change sides, both in the personal and national sense.   In fact, The Spies of Warsaw could also be an allegory of our personal lives.

 

But, if you don’t want to get into the depths of analysis, The Spies of Warsaw is also just a damn good, well written spy novel, full of all the twists and turns that shock and confuse to the very end, just the way you want it!

 

Time for me to grab another spy novel by Alan Furst!  Fortunately, there are many.