Something I read in Balkan Ghosts piqued my interest in Salonika/Thessaloniki: during World War II, the Nazis sent 94% of the Jews who lived in this ancient city to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Between that heartbreaking fact, and Salonika's larger history as a crossroads of empire--Byzantine and Ottoman, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek--I wanted to read more. And, as he tends to do, Alan Furst delivered. Sure, he's got a formula he rarely deviates from (a good-hearted everyman with a few special talents woos the ladies and solves problems large and small during the run-up to the Nazi occupation of X,Y, or Z nation) but his writing is so elegant and rich I hardly minded the repetition. A cracking thriller; sympathetic characters; a culture, time and place brought to life; thanks to Furst, I got to inhabit Salonika for a few hours.