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Spies of the Balkans: A Novel by Alan Furst
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Spies of the Balkans: A Novel (original 2010; edition 2010)

by Alan Furst

Series: Night Soldiers (11)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,0363719,606 (3.81)71
As war approaches northern Greece, the spies begin to circle--from the Turkish legation to the German secret service. In the ancient port of Salonika, Costa Zannis, a senior police official, head of an office that handles special "political" cases, risks everything to secure an escape route for those hunted by the Gestapo.… (more)
Member:Clea_Simon
Title:Spies of the Balkans: A Novel
Authors:Alan Furst
Info:Random House (2010), Hardcover, 288 pages
Collections:Your library
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Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst (Author) (2010)

  1. 11
    Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernières (TomWaitsTables)
  2. 00
    The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning (ten_floors_up)
    ten_floors_up: Set in a similar timeframe, but with different Balkan locations (Bucharest, Athens). Literary fiction rather than thriller, with a touch of autobiography. The characters here are English expatriates caught up in the events of the times.
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» See also 71 mentions

English (36)  Spanish (1)  All languages (37)
Showing 1-5 of 36 (next | show all)
Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst combines suspense and intrigue to tell the story of Greece as it anticipated the probability of invasion by Hitler. It’s main character, Costa Zannis, is a ‘high ranking police official’ with a wonderful knack of rooting out evil, apprehending villains and achieving just about any task he is assigned.
In this capacity, he is a natural to participate in the underground activities that aim to undermine the Nazi invasion and conquest. At first, he helps refugees escape the Nazis and later, he performs various other high danger, high intrigue and high suspense activities that work toward helping Greece.
Furst develops characters who feel real, who have flaws and strengths and who may or may not be likable. He employs the character traits he gives his characters as plot elements that carry the storyline forward in ways it could not go without those elements.
Like all suspense novels, Furst’s crisis points sometimes depend upon coincidences and other happenstances that may be ‘just a little too convenient’ for the storyline, but I do not find these distracting as I do in many other novels. He employs them so deftly that they are hardly noticeable. (Thomas Hardy could have learned from him).
This book is one of the earlier ones in the series he began with Night Soldiers. I am not one to read a series by an author, but there are exceptions and Furst is one of them. Until and except for his last novel, Under Occupation, he has been consistently good. His works are great for fans of WW II fiction, fans of suspense novels, fans of spy novels or fans who simply enjoy good writing. He is one writer of a series that I generally look forward to reading. I only hope he returns to form or uses a theme other than WW II for his next offerings since his last book came nowhere near the quality of the ones which preceded it. ( )
  PaulLoesch | Apr 2, 2022 |
Furst loves the Balkan settings and this WWII “thriller” centers on a Greek policeman involved with helping people escape from Germany just before the iron fist of Hitler screams through Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. Atmospheric. ( )
  PattyLee | Dec 14, 2021 |
I should have been bored silly by this book. It has all the usual Alan Furst features. There's the hero who goes above and beyond. It's soon to be World War II. Everyone is adjusting. Everyone is nervous or concerned. No one seems to be controlling things. There's escapism. There's the usual physical intimacy. There's high society, there's the ordinary people doing ordinary things. There's cars, there's food. There are gaps in the timeline. There's a dog. Everything is perfect to the period and the place. And when all is said and done events still move in the expected direction regardless of the hero's best efforts. It's almost formulaic. But it still works. This time the hero is a police caption in Salonika who secretly is working with the British , even if he barely knows it, and on the side helping Jews escape Germany. Furst kept my interest throughout. I always wanted more. I learned things about how war came to Greece and the Balkans. It's a great read. ( )
  Ed_Schneider | Sep 1, 2021 |
Alan Furst has a clever knack of transporting you through the power of his writing through time and space. The time: autumn 1940. The place: Salonika (now Thessaloniki), Greece. As with the other books from the 'Night Soldiers' series that I have read, we are thrown into a world of turmoil and uncertainty brought on by the traumatic upheaval of the Second World War (or the build up to it). Furst's signature style of blending historic characters and events with authentic scene-setting and sensory suggestion is comfortingly to the fore, and I find myself enjoying the escapism that comes with a well written tale of espionage and resistance.

Costa Zannis is an early middle-aged plain clothes 'Senior Police Official' tasked with handling the awkward cases. The 'political' files that nobody else either can or wants to deal with. He has his flaws, and wouldn't even claim to be a good cop, but is dedicated to his city and its reputation as a welcoming and international port. "Europe's back door". The war in Europe creeps ever closer, with agents of all sorts afoot. Our tale takes us from the somewhat faded glamour of Ottoman-era hotels to the Byzantine back alleyway underworld. Into the melting pot of Zannis' day to day encounters comes an unexpected visitor from Berlin, with a proposal that will test him to the limit of his abilities.

~~~

'Yes,' Zannis said. 'That's for me.' The letter was from, apparently, a manufacturer of industrial knitting machines in Brandenburg - not far from Berlin - to the assistant general manager of the Royale Garment Company in Salonika. Well done, he thought.

***

First, he practiced, scorched a few pieces of paper, finally set the dial on WARM. Then he laid the letter flat on a sheet of newspaper on the wooden table in the kitchen and pressed the iron down on the letter's salutation. Nothing. He moved to the text in the middle - 'I am pleased to inform you that 4 replacement motors' - but, again, nothing. No! A faint mark had appeared above the p of 'pleased'. More heat. He turned the dial to LOW, waited as the iron warmed, pressed for a count of five and produced parts of three letters. He tried once more, counting slowly to ten, and there it was: '...ress KALCHER UND DRO...'
Ten minutes later he had the whole message, in tiny sepia-coloured block letters between the lines of the commercial text:

Reply to address KALCHER UND KROHN, lawyers, 17, Arbenstrasse, Berlin. Write as H.H.STRAUB. 26 December man and wife travelling under name HARTMANN arrive Budapest from Vienna via 3-day excursion steamer LEVERKUSEN. He 55 years old, wears green tie, she 52 years old, wears green slouch hat. Can you assist Budapest to Belgrade? Believe last shipment lost there to Gestapo agents. Can you find boat out your port? Please help.

~~~

This was the third book of his that I have read and enjoyed, and I look forward to reading more of his books whenever I get the chance. ( )
  Polaris- | Feb 19, 2021 |
Furst is in top form with his latest novel. Yes, he continues to follow his formula. Yes, the Brasserie Heininger and its infamous table 14 show up again. And I have to admit that the romance in this novel comes across--at least, at first--as contrived rather than genuine.

What makes these books work is Furst's depictions of people, mostly ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances, set in a bygone era full of detail and atmosphere. One would think that Furst, who has carved out a narrow niche--historical thrillers set in late 1930s-1940s Europe--would have worn this niche smooth by now. On the contrary, each novel adds something new. He isn't always consistent--Blood Of Victory was far better than the following Dark Voyage--but even in his least best novels he creates compelling characters whose fates we care about.

I've spent several nights reading Furst's books and glancing at the clock, thinking I need to go to sleep, but then I've only got twenty or so pages left... Spies of the Balkans was no different. Intelligent, well-written novels, both in terms of characterization, plot, and language. ( )
1 vote ChristopherSwann | May 15, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 36 (next | show all)
Spies of the Balkans is the latest of his page-turners about the coming threat of Nazism and German occupation in the regions of Europe that were neither immediately conquered like France or Poland, nor which held out like Britain. The impact of the war on the Iberian peninsular, or on those central European countries like Switzerland, Hungary and Romania which tried to stay aloof from the conflict, remains little-known.

Furst writes about this world overshadowed by, but not totally plunged into, full-scale conflict.

Denis MacShane MP was Minister for the Balkans 2001-2005
 
“Spies of the Balkans” is set primarily in the northeastern Greek city of Salonika, an ancient and famously polyglot place only recently returned to Athens’ sovereignty by the second Balkan War. The action, which is propulsively nonstop, occurs over the crucial seven-month period between late 1940 and the Nazi invasion of Greece in the spring of 1941. Furst’s engaging protagonist is a “senior official” of the Salonika police, Constantine (Costa) Zannis. His personal qualities — a rare disinterest in bribes, an unfailing discretion and a wide-ranging competence that allows him to navigate back alleys and exclusive private clubs — have attracted the notice and patronage of the city’s 80-year-old police commissioner, Vangelis.
 
Mr. Furst has written so often about such men, the intrigue that surrounds them, and their subtle, intuitive maneuvering that he risks repeating himself. But Zannis is a younger, more vigorous version of the prototype than some. And he is Greek, which adds a whole new perspective to Mr. Furst’s view of Europe before and during World War II, given the strategic importance of Greece’s ability to resist German domination. If shades of its personal drama are by now familiar to Mr. Furst’s readers, this book’s larger and more important geography seems new.
 

» Add other authors (8 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Furst, AlanAuthorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Gerroll, DanielNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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In August of 1939, General Ioannis Metaxas,
the prime minister of Greece, told a Romanian
diplomat "that the old Europe would end when
the swastika flew over the Acropolis."
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In autumn, the rains came to Macedonia.
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As war approaches northern Greece, the spies begin to circle--from the Turkish legation to the German secret service. In the ancient port of Salonika, Costa Zannis, a senior police official, head of an office that handles special "political" cases, risks everything to secure an escape route for those hunted by the Gestapo.

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Greece, 1940: In the ancient port of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini's invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania -- the first defeat for an ally of the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe. But Adolf Hitler will not tolerate such defiance: in the spring he will invade the Balkans, and the people of Salonika can only watch and wait. At the center of this drama is Constantine "Costa" Zannis, a senior police official. Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to fight back against the world's evil.
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