Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst

 

Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst

 

Mission to Paris is one of those all too rare novels that strips away the characters’ coats of armor to revel real people, pushed and transformed in the awkwardness of real situations.  

 

I get so tired with the ho-hum triteness of perfection.  I think you know what I mean; characters always knowing the perfectly clever replies, making the right moves, with perfect timing, always choosing the best wine, staying in the best hotels, getting the girl, and forever being one step ahead of numerous adversaries. 

 

Frequently tucked into the clutter of plot, there’s also the triteness of heavy-handed romance.  Boy gets girl, loses girl, gets girl.  Even reminding yourself of the pattern makes you want to toss the book hard enough to dent the wall. 

 

Alan Furst, in all his novels, and definitely in Mission to Paris, avoids those careless blunders of perfection and the lack of them is the key to chiseled characters, dented and scratched by age and experience and inexperience, that glued me to each page.  This novel, that purports to be a spy novel, is more a study of humanity, supported by an intriguing and ever shifting and intensifying plot.

 

It is autumn of 1938 and the setting is Paris, a Paris straining under the threat of war.

 

To refresh your memory, in 1933 Hitler came to power in a Germany still seething over its treatment by the Allies at the end of World War I.  In many German political minds, France was the mastermind of this villainy.  While peace was now in hand, Germany burned with the need for white-hot revenge and the object of that revenge centered on France.

 

In 1938, the Germans were playing political poker, holding their cards tightly and making the world guess.  Would there be war?  Should France rearm?  Surely everyone wanted peace, n’est pas?

 

Despite this Parisian world of intrigue and uncertainty, Warner Brothers wants to film a movie, staring Fredric Stahl, Austrian by birth, but now a Hollywood heartthrob.  Stahl is mostly non-political and simply wants to make the movie and get back to America.  He speaks his native language, German of course, but also English and French.  He is also a star of some magnitude, making him the perfect chicken to be flavored, stewed, and served to an array of politicians and plotters of all the major players.

 

And while he innocently meets old friends and enjoys his favorite city, the pot begins to boil. Stahl is not immune.  He feels the heat building.  And suddenly the plot intensifies to heart stopping intensity.

 

The beauty of the writing and finely drawn characters alone carried its own joy, transporting me to that time and place.  Then the carefully crafted plot, carried me into the caldron of passionate intrigue and nail biting intensity.  This is a book that will haunt you and even make you doubt your own courage, as you’re engulfed in the rising flames of war.

 

Pick up a copy of Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst, and like all his other spy novels, you won’t want to put it down.