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31st out of 50 books
—
17 voters
Spies of the Balkans (Night Soldiers #11)
by
Alan Furst
Greece, 1940. In the port city of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. As Adolf Hitler plans to invade the Balkans, spies begin to circle—and Costa Zannis, a senior police official, must deal with them all. He is soon in the game, working to secure an escape route for fugitives from Nazi Ber...more
ebook, 0 pages
Published
June 15th 2010
by Random House
(first published 2009)
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May 17, 2013
Steve aka Sckenda
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Lovers of Sophisticated Historical Espionage
Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by:
Lucky Find at a Bargain Bin
Greece: 1940-41. Spies and refugees skulk the rainy streets of Salonika, a world port and city of waterfront dives. Salonika is the ancient city of Thessalonica (to the churches of which St. Paul addressed two epistles), but it is also the largest red light district and the home to the largest community of Sephardic Jews in Eastern Europe. Salonika is also the home of spies—spies who always want something.
“Seagulls circled above the port, their cries doing nothing to disperse the melancholy.” ...more
“Seagulls circled above the port, their cries doing nothing to disperse the melancholy.” ...more
Furst set a very high standard for himself early in his career. He clearly owns the period from 1933-45 in Europe and is a very fine writer of historical fiction filled with intrigue and likeable characters. Over the last few years, however, he has slipped into a formulaic pattern that takes few risks and delivers few surprises. I'm not concerned with those formulaic elements that function as trademarks (protagonists who never die, Table 14 in the Brasserie Heininger in Paris with its mirror mar...more
Furst is in top form with his latest novel. Yes, he continues to follow his formula. Yes, the Brasserie Heininger and its infamous table 14 show up again. And I have to admit that the romance in this novel comes across--at least, at first--as contrived rather than genuine.
What makes these books work is Furst's depictions of people, mostly ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances, set in a bygone era full of detail and atmosphere. One would think that Furst, who has carved out a narrow niche--...more
What makes these books work is Furst's depictions of people, mostly ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances, set in a bygone era full of detail and atmosphere. One would think that Furst, who has carved out a narrow niche--...more
Oct 10, 2011
Richard Wise
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literary-fiction
How does he do it? That sense of dark foreboding. Well lots of foreshadowing in the latest from Alan Furst. So many of his characters are fairly ordinary guys shoved into an extraordinary world. A gripping portrait of pre-WWII Europe.
This one Costa Zannis, a Greek cop in Salonika who gets involved with a very beautiful, aristocratic German Jewess who is smuggling her friends out of Berlin decides he wants to help. Would he have been so anxious had she looked like the backside of a horse? Probab...more
This one Costa Zannis, a Greek cop in Salonika who gets involved with a very beautiful, aristocratic German Jewess who is smuggling her friends out of Berlin decides he wants to help. Would he have been so anxious had she looked like the backside of a horse? Probab...more
My third Alan Furst novel, and the most recently published (2010). The action takes place in Greece, specifically in the northern port city of Salonika in 1940. Nazi Germany is threatening to invade Hungary and ultimately Greece. Our hero is a Salonika police detective, Costa Zannis, who works in a special unit of the police dept where he evolves into a city leader. Based on his personal and professional connections, he gets drawn into the underground movement. Along the way, as per usual for Fu...more
This was my second of Furst's spy books, and I wasn't disappointed. His writing is excellent--clear, crisp, and without excessive adverbs. His plot is believable. But best of all, for me (a historian) is that the history is so interesting and so accurate. I admit, I'm not a pro at Balkan history, but what little I know was reflected and amplified in this book. I loved hearing references to the wars previous to the Great War, and I learned a good deal about the time and place. Never having visite...more
Reading Alan Furst's Night Soldiers series is a bit like reading Patrick O'Brian. Furst's first (heh) was Night Soldiers, a massive epic of war and espionage, probably the best novel about spies in the Second World War you're likely to read. But in many ways it set the parameters for his subsequent works, while Red Gold set the template. None of the other books have been as epic - except inasmuch as anything touched by the Second World War is touched by the epic - tighter, briefer, sharper, more...more
# 8 - Meh. There are some things I really enjoyed about this book. Of course, it met my ongoing interest in WWII, and taught me a bit about a location of the war I was not at all familiar with (Greece, Turkey, Hungary, etc. in the Balkans). The writing was pretty good, the scenes were well described, and the plot developments were plausible (which I like even in a fiction book). During the first part of the book, I was pretty excited about the things that were set up, and was eager for the autho...more
Furst ploughs a furrow started by Eric Ambler and Graham Greene in their classic periods before the Second World War, and he does it extremely well. All of Furst’s spy novels are set in this period. This one is set in Thessaloniki before the Italian invasion of Greece, and focuses on people who sense that they will be next in line for the Axis Power treatment. As ever, it’s part of the Balkans’s geography that warmongers will always seek to use it for their own purposes, and, as usual, AF has do...more
This was not the first Furst I read. Like so many authors I have come to know, I stumbled over his works when looking for something by someone with a name very close on the library shelves.
Furst is adept at drawing out characters who to most people, would not rate a second look. In this case a humble police lieutenant with a chaotic love life living in the back streets of Salonika.
It is true to life in that many 'spies' are very ordinary people often chosen because they are expendable or becaus...more
Furst is adept at drawing out characters who to most people, would not rate a second look. In this case a humble police lieutenant with a chaotic love life living in the back streets of Salonika.
It is true to life in that many 'spies' are very ordinary people often chosen because they are expendable or becaus...more
Greece in the early 1940s kept her wary eye on Hitler's advances through parts of Europe. Mussolini, attempting to replicate Hitler's success, decides to invade Greece, but is repelled by the Greek army. But Salonika waits for the inevitable invasion by Hitler's army and secret service.
In these uncertain times, spies with different international concerns blend into Salonika society, some catching the eye of Costa Zannis, a police inspector known for his integrity, and one with a special team, wo...more
In these uncertain times, spies with different international concerns blend into Salonika society, some catching the eye of Costa Zannis, a police inspector known for his integrity, and one with a special team, wo...more
Oh dear. Chosen because it was on the TV Book Club and had some good reviews in the year. This is truely terrible.
How can anyone make WW2 boring?
Costas Zannis is a policeman in Salonika, Greece in 1941. There is a map at the start of the book. Thats always a good place to start. The work of fiction neatly explains the Balkans part in WW2 and the history of the countries in the area - Yugoslavia, Turkey and so on. This is vaguely interesting.
What fails is the story. Remember this is a work of fic...more
How can anyone make WW2 boring?
Costas Zannis is a policeman in Salonika, Greece in 1941. There is a map at the start of the book. Thats always a good place to start. The work of fiction neatly explains the Balkans part in WW2 and the history of the countries in the area - Yugoslavia, Turkey and so on. This is vaguely interesting.
What fails is the story. Remember this is a work of fic...more
Furst does his usual creditable job here, albeit unevenly. Reading his novels, you get a sense of the issues and impact of the Second World War in scattered points throughout Europe. Poland, Russia, the Crimea, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy--they all show up at one point or other. Common to practically all of them, of course, is Paris, to which all the heroes of his books are drawn. The appeal to telling the story of the war from the perspective of these nations is that we see the particularit...more
Due to an incomplete audio file, I ended up listening to about half of this book on my ipod and then, after waiting for my local library to get it in, reading the rest of it. Even taking that into account, I think this book is pretty fragmentary--but in a good way, in a way that works for the subject matter: that is, rather than tell some great big plot (someone's going to kill Hitler!), Furst keeps the focus here on one Greek intelligence agent, Costa Zannis, and how he spends his time leading...more
Spies of the Balkans takes place primarily in Salonika over the six months preceding the April 1941 Nazi invasion of Greece. The protagonist is prototypically Furstian: a highly competent, stoic loner with a strong moral compass. He is Zannis, a police detective who gets involved in an underground network smuggling Jews out of Germany, participates in battles against Italy at the mountainous Albanian border, and gets recruited by British spies to attempt a daring evacuation of an important Briti...more
I'm not sure how he does it but when my childhood chum Scott sends me a book, it always turns out to be the right one at the right time. 'Spies of the Balkans' sucked me right in, and now I've read three of this group (not really a series) of spy novels.
So far, Furst appears to be formulaic. Each of the novels I've read is placed in Europe as that continent is uneasily shifting into World War II. Each concerns someone who doesn't think of himself as a spy who becomes one, someone with a strong e...more
So far, Furst appears to be formulaic. Each of the novels I've read is placed in Europe as that continent is uneasily shifting into World War II. Each concerns someone who doesn't think of himself as a spy who becomes one, someone with a strong e...more
Sep 07, 2010
Tony
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction-crime-detection
Furst, Alan. SPIES OF THE BALKANS. (2010). ****. The first thing you will notice about this book is the period-styled photo on the dust jacket. The style itself looked familiar and I learned that it was a photo by Robert Doisneau. I had never heard of this photographer until about six years ago when I stumbled upon an exhibition of his in St. Petersburg (Fla). If you know him, find out more! The book...this isn’t one of Furst’s best, but it is still head and shoulders above the competition in th...more
I've read all of Alan Furst's WWII spy novels and have been entranced by almost all of them.
This one is, therefore, a big disappointment. Furst's best books have vivid setting descriptions that create not only the place and times but also the atmosphere and tension of the events. Balkans has so little of this that it could be taking place on an empty sound stage. The best books have a complex characters, people who have been pulled into resistance action by the WWII events that enter their every...more
This one is, therefore, a big disappointment. Furst's best books have vivid setting descriptions that create not only the place and times but also the atmosphere and tension of the events. Balkans has so little of this that it could be taking place on an empty sound stage. The best books have a complex characters, people who have been pulled into resistance action by the WWII events that enter their every...more
Here’s the latest novel by Alan Furst about anti-Nazi and anti-Facist clandestine activity during World War II. As is usually the case, the hero is a non-professional spy—in this case, a police officer in Salonika named Constantine “Costa” Zannis. Zannis’s role is to handle cases that require special sensitivity on the part of the officer handling them. Zannis chooses to become involved in an effort to smuggle Jews out of Berlin to the Balkans. One thing leads to another, and soon he is courted...more
I've been reading Furst since his first book, and I'm thrilled that he's finally gotten around to setting something in my ancestral homeland (Greece). That said, he does have a very distinctive style that is definitely not to everyone's taste. His narratives tend to unfold in a somewhat fractured way, in vignettes that can sometimes skip large swathes of time and geography. His characters can often have a somewhat detached tone to them, which can make them somewhat less empathetic than your aver...more
Costa Zannis is an Athens cop surrounded by spies just before and after the Nazi invasion of Greece. He stumbles into running an underground railway for Jews escaping Nazi Berlin, is asked to rescue a downed British pilot in Paris, and falls in love with the beautiful wife of one of Greece's richest men.
Furst, as usual, delivers a 360 degree panorama of life in some part of WWII era Europe. We get a personal context of life in work, family and love, enveloped in the context of large-scale geopol...more
Furst, as usual, delivers a 360 degree panorama of life in some part of WWII era Europe. We get a personal context of life in work, family and love, enveloped in the context of large-scale geopol...more
In this novel, Furst uses ones of his trademark tricks, sticking closely to one character without fully revealing what that character has learned or planned. Costa Zannis, a Greek police detective, goes on a dangerous mission. The reader learns the goal of the mission before Zannis leaves, but his preparatory meetings aren’t shown, so that the mission unfolds with a cinematic feeling of speed and surprise.
In this outing, Furst departs from that formula a little when he leaves Zannis to spend a...more
In this outing, Furst departs from that formula a little when he leaves Zannis to spend a...more
Furst novels are almost always more about atmospherics than plot or substance and Spies of the Balkans is not the exception that proves the rule. Furst is exceptional at setting the stage for each play, and his novels do create a sense of being there, a bit like waking up in a Bogart movie from the 40s, with Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre lurking somewhere in the background, wearing different costumes appropriate for the occasion. Furst fans always have a pretty good idea what to expect in t...more
Jun 05, 2011
Will Byrnes
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
mystery-and-spy-fiction
Shshshshsh. Don’t tell anyone. It is 1939. In the strategic Greek port city of Salonika, rumblings of war can be heard as Nazi Germany gains allies by threat and force. People wonder only when the invasion will come. Costa Zinnis is the head of a special political branch of the police, charged with discretely managing the problems of the connected and keeping his finger on the pulse of the town. And there is plenty going on. Spies abound. A mysterious German accepts an envelope in a dark alley....more
Is it possible to award five stars before reading? Probably not a sensible thing to do. But such is the consistent excellence of Alan Furst, the temptation is always there. In the case of Spies of the Balkans such confidence would not have been undermined.
There are excursions to familiar Furst territory - Paris, of course, and Berlin - but the epicentre now is Salonika in 1940. Greece, for the moment, is not at war but Hitler's shadow is lengthening and Mussolini is looking for cheap glory. In G...more
There are excursions to familiar Furst territory - Paris, of course, and Berlin - but the epicentre now is Salonika in 1940. Greece, for the moment, is not at war but Hitler's shadow is lengthening and Mussolini is looking for cheap glory. In G...more
This was not the finest Furst espionage thriller I have read. However, the good stuff first…pun unintended.
All of his novels take place in Europe during the ‘30’s and ‘40’s, leading up to the beginning of the Second World War. I lived through this historical era which not only intrigues me, but its European setting is of particular interest. Furst’s newest takes place in a lesser known geography where the ethnic tensions, eons old territorial disputes and nationalistic rivalries are always in...more
I'd never read Alan Furst before and felt like I was playing a classic black-and-white movie along in my head while I read. SPIES OF THE BALKANS was very different from the more commercial thrillers I've been plowing through of late. It's a great historical book that dips into the ambiguities of the early period of WWII and Greece's involvement in particular. Local police officer Constantine Zannis of Solonika,(northern Greece - thus, the Balkans) has his eye on everything from the adulterous Ma...more
This story takes place in 1940 and early 1941, mostly in Greece. The main character here is Constantine "Costa" Zannis, who has a senior position in the police force in the port city of Salonika.
Greece fights back an Italian invasion coming from the north and pushed the Italian forces back to Albania. There is increasing pressure on the Balkans from the Germans, and Zannis begins to see signs of spies from a variety of countries. Zannis himself also becomes involved in facilitating an escape ro...more
Greece fights back an Italian invasion coming from the north and pushed the Italian forces back to Albania. There is increasing pressure on the Balkans from the Germans, and Zannis begins to see signs of spies from a variety of countries. Zannis himself also becomes involved in facilitating an escape ro...more
The ‘hero’, Constantine Zannis, is a Greek policeman based in Salonika. The action takes place mainly in Greece but in several other European countries as well in the period between the attempted Italian annexation of Greece and the invasion of Greece by the Nazis. Events are told in chronological order, with no flashbacks or other tricks of time.
Either the author knows Europe very well or his research is excellent. I would guess both, though any research he has done is well integrated into the...more
Either the author knows Europe very well or his research is excellent. I would guess both, though any research he has done is well integrated into the...more
A decent entry in Furst's series. The book gets by more on character than on a solid plot. The lead character, Costa Zannis is a special detective in pre-Second World War Salonika (now called Thessalonika). He is drawn into the clandestine world initially by helping German Jews escape to Turkey. British Intelligence gets wind of his success and pushes him into advancing their aims in the Balkans. Honorable, practical and patriotic, Zannis is drawn into increasingly difficult and dangerous plans....more
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Alan Furst is widely recognized as the current master of the historical spy novel. Born in New York, he has lived for long periods in France, especially Paris. He now lives on Long Island.
Night Soldiers novels
* Night Soldiers (1988)
* Dark Star (1991)
* The Polish Officer (1995)
* The World at Night (1996)
* Red Gold (1999)
* Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
* Blood of Victory (2003)
* Dark Voyage (2004)
* The F...more
More about Alan Furst...
Night Soldiers novels
* Night Soldiers (1988)
* Dark Star (1991)
* The Polish Officer (1995)
* The World at Night (1996)
* Red Gold (1999)
* Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
* Blood of Victory (2003)
* Dark Voyage (2004)
* The F...more
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“And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.”
—
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I'm with you there, Helen. I have been checking out his other books...more
May 13, 2013 07:53pm
May 13, 2013 08:07pm