Alan Furst is widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel. He is the author of Night Soldiers, Dark Star, The Polish Officer, The World at Night, Red Gold, Kingdom of Shadows, Blood of Victory, and Dark Voyage. Born in New York, he has lived for long periods in France, especially Paris. He now lives on Long Island, New York. Visit the author's website at AlanFurst.net.
Furst's strength is his consistency; the dude can really evoke an atmosphere, can describe-really intimately-a situation or an encounter that can only have happened, like, 60 years ago. I don't think of myself as a reader of historical fiction, but I like spy stories, a compelling narrative, World War II plots with the clear good guy/bad guy dynamic, and literate detail. So I like Furst, who makes it easy for me to consider the un-American view, and if there's anything I like, it's a little not-American now and then. These Night Soldiers books are populated with lots of not-Americans, from French cinematographers to Italian journalists to Hungarian ad men. Furst's oeuvre has enough of the familiar to keep me anchored, but enough of the unusual to keep me interested. Spies plunks readerdudes down in early-war Macedonia, a primitive place where a policeman works with undercover supersecret spy types against Benito Mussolini to devise a safe escape route from Germany. Hell, yeah. (See LJ's original review in the May 15, 2010 issue.)-Douglas Lord, "Books for Dudes," BookSmack! 7/1/10 Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
