The Spies of Warsaw (Night Soldiers, #10) in SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group

Dec 05, 2010 KOMET rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-espionage-thriller, alan-furst

The Spies of Warsaw is an encapsulation of the subtle and dark arts of espionage in interwar Europe. An art, which, through the passage of centuries, had been enhanced with the accoutrements of science.

The story begins in Poland in late 1937. A man who looks to be a modest businessman arrives in Warsaw, briefcase in hand. He books a room at the Hotel Europejski for an assignation with his mistress, a Polish countess. All is not as it seems. The businessman is Edvard Uhl, an engineer and special The Spies of Warsaw is an encapsulation of the subtle and dark arts of espionage in interwar Europe. An art, which, through the passage of centuries, had been enhanced with the accoutrements of science.

The story begins in Poland in late 1937. A man who looks to be a modest businessman arrives in Warsaw, briefcase in hand. He books a room at the Hotel Europejski for an assignation with his mistress, a Polish countess. All is not as it seems. The businessman is Edvard Uhl, an engineer and specialist in tank design, who lives just across the border in Breslau. There is more to Herr Uhl than meets the eye. For some time, he had had some "dealings" with the French military attache. Both men had worked well together for some time. But now the attache has been recalled. His replacement is Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, born of the lesser nobility in the heart of the French countryside, a graduate of Saint Cyr (the French equivalent of West Point), where one of his classmates was a fellow officer by the name of Charles de Gaulle. Mercier is a veteran of the First World War and of the Russo-Polish War of 1920-21 (where he again renewed his acquaintance with de Gaulle).

Being an attache begins as a bit of a bewildering experience for Mercier le veuf. Besides making the acquaintance of his Polish counterparts, and ingratiating himself with the diplomatic community in Warsaw through endless rounds of parties graced with scintillating conversations, bubbly champagne, and fine food, Mercier has to learn --- quickly --- the skills deemed essential for being a successful spy. In the process, he embarks upon a journey with many twists and turns. A journey in which one step too far could be his last. The stakes are high. The margins --- infinite, given the increasingly fractious relations among Poland, Germany, and France.

Furst shows in this book why he is generally acknowledged as the master of the historical espionage novel. Espionage brings out both the best and most base aspects of people. In reading " The Spies of Warsaw", brace yourself for a thrilling and bumpy ride. ...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Seth Kaplan rated it really liked it

Another fantastic entry from Furst. This book relied a little more heavily on traditional descriptions of spy craft. Most importantly, it describes so poignantly what it must have been like in Poland and France in the year leading up to the outbreak of WWII in Europe. Furst's characters, both those that are new and those that have been met before in other novels, are so well developed. This reads as a slice of life novel, capturing the essence of a society about to be plunged into war again for ...more

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