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The Polish Officer A Novel Alan Furst Books

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The Polish Officer A Novel Alan Furst Books

Because of the time period in which he concentrates his fiction, the years leading up to and including World War II, Alan Furst is most notably compared to Eric Ambler. While Ambler is justifiably credited with refining the espionage novel, and wrote superb tales about Europe's pre-war period, there are notable differences between these two stellar authors. Ambler, unlike Furst, wrote tightly wound plots. He also moved with the times, as in his long career, he fictionalized subjects based upon the times in which he lived, writing thrillers on subjects ranging from Soviet Communism to nationalism to arms dealing. As skillful as he was in writing his novels, you always knew as a reader that Ambler was probably comfortably sitting at his typewriter when he spooled out his words. That is not a criticism of his skill as a writer, it is meant merely as an understanding of his style. LeCarre, Forsyth, Deighton, and others share this trait.

On the other hand, from the way his books pitch forward at jagged levels, you can imagine that Furst is not so much a novelist, but an actual observer of the events he depicts. Detailed and character-driven rather than plunging towards an ultimate end, his books seem to be formulated from the notes of a reporter, looking over shoulders, peeking around corners, peering into the edges of darkness and the mindsets of the people who act and suceed and suffer. There may be no espionage writer like him.

In The Polish Officer, Army Captain Alexander de Milja, depressed and not expecting a long life after the Nazis march into Warsaw, goes underground, and engages in several missions in various parts of Europe. He travels sometimes in disguise, recruits personnel, sometimes succeeds, and other times loves and loses. Although the ending is more defined here than in other books by Furst, even on the last page, you instinctively know there will in the future, be another day, another mission, another clandestine battle to be fought. Alan Furst's works do not end neatly, for the midst of wartime is not a place for easy resolution. This is a master work by a master craftsman.


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The Polish Officer A Novel Alan Furst Books Reviews

For readers of Alan Furst's recent novels, it may come as a surprise that his early novels, like the Polish Officer, are quite good. Filled with compelling vignettes, deep issues, evocative settings, and wonderful minor characters, the Polish Officer genuinely takes you somewhere. Somewhere distant, remote, exotic.

"The truck stood silent on the ice. A few flakes of snow drifted down, then more. the clouds began to gather and the moon faded away until there was hardly any light at all. The snow fell heavier now, hissed down, a white blanket on the river, and the hills, and the truck."

The main character, de Milja, is a chameleon in this novel, taking on different identities and moving in different circles. His fatalism takes on different aspects as he experiences love, loss, exhilaration, bemusement, disappointment. He shows us many different views of the early stages of world war II, but always from an oblique angle. Never at the center of affairs, but always somewhere fascinating.
I must begin by confessing that I am a huge fan of Furst. I read everything he writes. Why? In part it is the time period and In part it is because I have lived and/or travelled in all of the places that figure so highly in his detailed sense of place. And it is the sense of place that attracts me the most in all fiction. Furst recreates the tension, cruelty, courage and diversity of cultures of wartime Europe in all of his novels. This one follows much the same formula as others. His ability to capture flawed but essentially heroic spies is simply delicious and thereby credible. By the magic of skilled storytelling the reader gets to know these participants in the game of defeating the Nazi regime. If the reader is willing to surrender to the narrative art of Furst, it is possible to be transported as if by time travel to another place and time and in that transported status come to see and feel what was at stake in those desperate days of the period. And at stake was whether or not this one lived or died and if allowed to live, what it meant to sacrifice everything in order to make a small gesture of courage that might result in the denigration of the evils wrought by Hitler's minions. In the midst of this cauldron, ordinary people eat, drink, engage in romantic liaisons and are also betrayed with horrendous consequences. All of this applies to the protagonist "Polish Soldier'," an unlikely actor put to the test when no other would do. Finding a pathway into the reader's heart, he becomes a fictional but real brother. A brother we never had but would seek to emulate, were we to be thrust into the fray.
Because of the time period in which he concentrates his fiction, the years leading up to and including World War II, Alan Furst is most notably compared to Eric Ambler. While Ambler is justifiably credited with refining the espionage novel, and wrote superb tales about Europe's pre-war period, there are notable differences between these two stellar authors. Ambler, unlike Furst, wrote tightly wound plots. He also moved with the times, as in his long career, he fictionalized subjects based upon the times in which he lived, writing thrillers on subjects ranging from Soviet Communism to nationalism to arms dealing. As skillful as he was in writing his novels, you always knew as a reader that Ambler was probably comfortably sitting at his typewriter when he spooled out his words. That is not a criticism of his skill as a writer, it is meant merely as an understanding of his style. LeCarre, Forsyth, Deighton, and others share this trait.

On the other hand, from the way his books pitch forward at jagged levels, you can imagine that Furst is not so much a novelist, but an actual observer of the events he depicts. Detailed and character-driven rather than plunging towards an ultimate end, his books seem to be formulated from the notes of a reporter, looking over shoulders, peeking around corners, peering into the edges of darkness and the mindsets of the people who act and suceed and suffer. There may be no espionage writer like him.

In The Polish Officer, Army Captain Alexander de Milja, depressed and not expecting a long life after the Nazis march into Warsaw, goes underground, and engages in several missions in various parts of Europe. He travels sometimes in disguise, recruits personnel, sometimes succeeds, and other times loves and loses. Although the ending is more defined here than in other books by Furst, even on the last page, you instinctively know there will in the future, be another day, another mission, another clandestine battle to be fought. Alan Furst's works do not end neatly, for the midst of wartime is not a place for easy resolution. This is a master work by a master craftsman.