Book Log 2011 #28: Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst


In the early days of World War II, Greece remains stubbornly independent, waiting for the inevitable German invasion. A police detective in Salonika finds himself made the department's fixer, answering the call for the difficult cases that require more tact than procedure. He's good at it, and it helps keep the war at bay.

His skills are noted by his British girlfriend, nominally a ballet teacher whose return to the UK is followed by the appearance of a man who is nominally a travel writer, who approaches the detective to help set up a way to get persons threatened by the Nazi policy towards Jews to a safer residence in Turkey. This requires all of the detective's skill and nerve, as it becomes increasingly more difficult to move between countries and make the arrangements to keep this underground railroad going.

On top of this, the detective has to keep an eye on him family so he can get them out of the city before the Germans arrive. And for good measure he enters into a relationship with the wife of the city's largest shipping magnate, a man of some power. The marriage is loveless, and the detective vows to save her - from both the Germans and her husband.

Few novels about World War II take place in the Balkans, so it's refreshing to have one set there. The espionage plot line is the better of the two, both in the way the refugee pipeline is run and in how Greeks were preparing for war. The romantic subplot is not as interesting, and from what I've read it's more awkward here than in other novels by Furst, who typically weaves a romantic subplot into his books.

I don't know how this one compares to those other books. but it's worth a read. It's on the short side, flows well, and has a well-drawn main character, so even when it's not at its best it's pretty good.