Mission to Paris, by Allan Furst
I loved this book, which is surprising because it's a spy novel and I haven't read one of those since I was a teenager and got bored with laughing at the macho posturing in the Bond novels. I read this book only because, in an effort to broaden my reading horizons, I'm planning to join a tea & book club sponsored by the local Parks and Recreation, and Mission to Paris was the book we had to read before the first meeting. The horizon broadening effort has certainly paid off; Allan Furst has written a series of historical spy novels set during WWII and I now plan to read my way thru all of them.
This one focuses on the experiences of an amateur spy, a civilian who's agreed to act as a courier transporting information and payment for such between real spies and spy masters. In this case, the civilian is one Fredric Stahl, a Viennese-born American film star who is on loan to Paramount's Paris studio to make a war movie, Apres de Guerre (all of this is fictional, of course, tho a couple of real life people do crop up in the story).
The time is 1938, when Nazi Germany is playing the political bully throughout Europe but war has not yet started. In fact, a great deal of the difficulties across Europe are being caused by the tensions between those who advocate appeasing Germany in order to avoid another world war, and those who see war as inevitable and appeasement as the greater evil. Paris is torn in two politically and there's open violence over it, with both sides trying to garner international support for their position.
America is still stubbornly mired in that idiotic isolationist policy that was only one of the great embarrassments of our nation's conduct during WWII. Yes, I know, we did a lot to make up for it once we actually got into the war but it took an unpardonably long time to do it, and that was only one piece of disgraceful behavior on our part from that era. But back to the story. Since President Roosevelt was no isolationist, he was assisting in European spy efforts against the Nazis with private funds.
Which, for the purposes of the story, is how Mr. Stahl gets involved. After a bad experience being manipulated by a pro-appeasement Paris newspaper, he agrees to accept an invitation to judge a German mountain films festival and carry a payment from his contact at the American Embassy in Paris to an undercover agent in Berlin. The agent, whom he recognizes only after an exchange of code words, turns out to be a famous Russian emigre actress who is using her popularity among the Nazi high command (cinemaphiles every one) to spy on them for Britian and America.
Now, these two do not become a couple, so don't go running off thinking that. The absence of such cliches is one of things I liked about Furst's writing (tho not as much as his descriptive abilities, such as this of Paris: And if the damp earth of the French countryside had lifted his spirit, being back in his old quartier was as though a door to heaven had been left open. Walking slowly, looking at everything, he couldn't get enough of the Parisian air: it smelled of a thousand years of rain dripping on stone, smelled of rough black tobacco and garlic and drains, of perfume, of potatoes frying in fat.)
Back to Mr. Stahl and the actress spy, Olga Orlova. The story does follow both (mostly Stahl) thru their separate lives after that first meeting and their business and personal intrigues, including Stahl's brief fling with a Paris society girl and a later, more meaningful (eventually ultimately meaningful) romance with the costume designer on his movie. There is a happy ending and, best of all, a hero who is a decent and good human being, a man who plays larger than life romantic heroes on the screen and turns out to be an authentic hero when the circumstances arise. It's very satisfying.
The writing is excellent and the story engaged me on every page -- it's one of those hard-to-put-down books and I spent a number of hours in the middle of the night reading it because that seemed better than sleeping. Altho the book I have is borrowed from the library, I am planning to buy my own copy.
This one focuses on the experiences of an amateur spy, a civilian who's agreed to act as a courier transporting information and payment for such between real spies and spy masters. In this case, the civilian is one Fredric Stahl, a Viennese-born American film star who is on loan to Paramount's Paris studio to make a war movie, Apres de Guerre (all of this is fictional, of course, tho a couple of real life people do crop up in the story).
The time is 1938, when Nazi Germany is playing the political bully throughout Europe but war has not yet started. In fact, a great deal of the difficulties across Europe are being caused by the tensions between those who advocate appeasing Germany in order to avoid another world war, and those who see war as inevitable and appeasement as the greater evil. Paris is torn in two politically and there's open violence over it, with both sides trying to garner international support for their position.
America is still stubbornly mired in that idiotic isolationist policy that was only one of the great embarrassments of our nation's conduct during WWII. Yes, I know, we did a lot to make up for it once we actually got into the war but it took an unpardonably long time to do it, and that was only one piece of disgraceful behavior on our part from that era. But back to the story. Since President Roosevelt was no isolationist, he was assisting in European spy efforts against the Nazis with private funds.
Which, for the purposes of the story, is how Mr. Stahl gets involved. After a bad experience being manipulated by a pro-appeasement Paris newspaper, he agrees to accept an invitation to judge a German mountain films festival and carry a payment from his contact at the American Embassy in Paris to an undercover agent in Berlin. The agent, whom he recognizes only after an exchange of code words, turns out to be a famous Russian emigre actress who is using her popularity among the Nazi high command (cinemaphiles every one) to spy on them for Britian and America.
Now, these two do not become a couple, so don't go running off thinking that. The absence of such cliches is one of things I liked about Furst's writing (tho not as much as his descriptive abilities, such as this of Paris: And if the damp earth of the French countryside had lifted his spirit, being back in his old quartier was as though a door to heaven had been left open. Walking slowly, looking at everything, he couldn't get enough of the Parisian air: it smelled of a thousand years of rain dripping on stone, smelled of rough black tobacco and garlic and drains, of perfume, of potatoes frying in fat.)
Back to Mr. Stahl and the actress spy, Olga Orlova. The story does follow both (mostly Stahl) thru their separate lives after that first meeting and their business and personal intrigues, including Stahl's brief fling with a Paris society girl and a later, more meaningful (eventually ultimately meaningful) romance with the costume designer on his movie. There is a happy ending and, best of all, a hero who is a decent and good human being, a man who plays larger than life romantic heroes on the screen and turns out to be an authentic hero when the circumstances arise. It's very satisfying.
The writing is excellent and the story engaged me on every page -- it's one of those hard-to-put-down books and I spent a number of hours in the middle of the night reading it because that seemed better than sleeping. Altho the book I have is borrowed from the library, I am planning to buy my own copy.