In Alan Furst’s nine novels, it always seems to be twilight. The second world war is being fought off-stage, or, as in The Foreign Correspondent, approaching with grim inevitability. Furst’s world is one of railway stations filled with steam, dark cafés filled with smoke, lonely hotel rooms filled with apprehension. It is populated by exiles and fixers, journalists and spies, police and politicians, honest, corrupt, or a bit of both. Business is transacted in four languages at once, five if lying counts as a separate tongue. The characters might have wandered in from films, Hollywood noirs shot by German expressionists, French gangster flicks starring Jean Gabin, or black and white Hitchcock.
Furst is often compared to Graham Greene, but a closer parallel might be Eric Ambler, who likewise dealt in the interface of politics and business, and whose characters are more ambiguous but less divided than Greene’s.
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