Long may he prosper. There may be no more sincerepraise than to say that a writer consistently operates at a high level or evenimproves, since so often that is not the case. I have read the last six ofFurst’s novels, and of them Spies of theBalkans (Random House) is the best, the most accomplished. It is not justreadable, it is good reading, pulling the reader into a believable historicalnarrative.
Instead of proceeding chronologically, novels in theseries lurch backward and forward within their overall time frame. The previousentry, The Spies of Warsaw, was set,not surprisingly, in Warsaw,from autumn 1937 through spring 1938. That was prior to the time period(1938-39) of the book before it, TheForeign Correspondent, about Italian émigrés in Paris.
Spies of theBalkans moves forward again. It’s October 1940 in the city of Salonika in northern Greece. Costa Zannis is a40-year-old senior police official in an office handling mostly politicalcases. Salonika, a center of Balkan espionagefor centuries, is now a crossroads of competing secret agents as the threat ofGerman or Italian invasion nears. Zannis is temporarily called up as a reservemilitary officer when Greecegoes to war with Italy inneighboring Albania.
This being a novel of intrigue, a fair amount of itnaturally involves romance. When Zannis’ British lover, Roxanne, suddenly hasto bolt the country, he is left with the surprised inference that she must havebeen a spy.
He also becomes involved, albeit not sexually, witha rich German, Emilia Krebs, operator of a kind of underground railroad to getJews out of Germany.Both women will call upon him later for assistance, Emilia with refugees and Roxannewith facilitating the activities of the British secret services.
In between is a fling with an old flame, thesex-hungry Tasia, but when his glance happens to fall upon a Greek woman namedDemetria, the unhappy wife of a pettily cruel multimillionaire, it is lust andlove at first sight on both sides. Their romantic relationship amid peril issomewhat reminiscent of that of Robert Jordan and Maria in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
While some novels are plot-driven and others arecharacter-driven, Furst’s novels are bothbut most of all they areatmosphere-driven. Graham Greene created “Greeneland,” a dim, dusty world ofsoured morality and languorous betrayal; just over the border is “Furstland,” atwilight realm of people on the runrefugees, Jews, leftists and others out ofpolitical favor.
Few have written as well about this aura ofpersecution and flight since Eric Ambler, master of sinister machinations inthe shadowy byways of the globe, or, better yet, Erich Maria Remarque, who hadpersonal, contemporaneous knowledge of it.
The author’s research, though it must be prodigious,is not obvious. His technique is to choose just the right seeminglyinconsequential details to fill in the picture. For example, the jigsaw ofcitizenship and nationalities, natural and acquired (usually by purchase), iswell put together. The sons of Zannis’ assistant, Gabi, buy Spanishcitizenship. Everything is purchasable if you have the price.
The last three pages contain a couple of twists andsurprises. Not fair to reveal just what, except to say the characters welcomethem and the reader is likely to approve of them. One is brought about by S.Kolb, an enigmatic figure who also made brief but crucial appearances in Dark Voyage and The ForeignCorrespondent.
Spies of theBalkans does not go on to describe the devastation and plunder the Germanswreaked upon Salonika’s Jewish community, the largest in Greece. It endsin April 1941 just before their invasion. Perhaps it will be the subject of afuture novel. We can only hope.
Alan Furstwill read from his new book at 7 p.m. June 17 at Boswell Book Co.
