The spy thriller could almost be said to have been patiently waiting for the Cold War to come along.
The paranoia of the post-war decades gave the genre urgency and relevance, and provided it with much of the iconography we now take for granted. But it was thriving before then, in the hands of writers like John Buchan and Robert Erskine Childers, to the extent that, in 1933, Compton Mackenzie was able to satirise the form in his own contribution, Water On The Brain.
It's in this earlier era of spy fiction that Alan Furst finds his inspiration, and for his 12th novel he returns to a time and place he's written about, to great effect, many times before: Paris, just before the outbreak of World War Two. Into the City of Lights sails a Hollywood film star named Fredric Stahl. An Austrian émigré who changed his name from Franz Stalka when he made the United States his home, he's been sent to Paris at the personal insistence of his studio boss, Jack Warner, to star in a French-made film about World War One.
As a distinguished American visitor with Austrian roots, Stahl has no sooner arrived in France than he's brought into play as a political pawn. He is ushered into the fashionable salons of Paris, where socialites funded directly by Berlin pressure him to support the cause of appeasing Hitler.
Disgusted, Stahl wants nothing more than to finish the film and get away from them. But he also comes into contact with people – émigrés, diplomats – who look at Hitler in a very different light, and realises that, if he gives the impression of being won over by the pro-Berlin tendency, he could be in a position to provide intelligence and assistance to the anti-Nazi cause.
With Stahl's moral choices driving the story long before he's in any actual danger, Mission To Paris is a slow burner that ramps up the tension at its own pace. Which isn't to say that there's no sense of threat: Stahl's celebrity status gives him a measure of protection, but that's not necessarily the case for the supporting characters – and we're introduced to a hitman in the opening chapter who lets us know just how high the stakes can get.
Even if Furst does cheekily name one of his minor characters Prideaux, this is as much a novel about the city he loves as it is about espionage. Love blossoms for Stahl because he's in Paris, not because he's in danger (though his age and marital status might have some bearing on the matter). Furst has his characters linger in the city's cafes and restaurants, explore its side-streets, mingle with salon society and the demi-monde, activities which seem all the more precious with the imminent prospect of the jackbooted hordes. A love letter to Paris and a smoothly, elegantly written spy story, it's a long way from the frenzied, formulaic thrillers that will be cluttering up the shelves this summer, and is all the better for it.
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