Under occupation : a novel

Title:

Author:

Furst, Alan author

ISBN:

9780399592300

9780399592317

Additional ISBN:

9780399592300 9780399592317

9781474610551 (paperback) 1474610544 9781474610544 9781474610551 1474610552

Personal Author:

Furst, Alan author

Publication Information:

New York : Random House, [2019]

Physical Description:

206 pages : maps ; 25 cm

Subject Term:

World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- France -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

France -- History -- German occupation, 1940-1945 -- Fiction.

Paris (France) -- History -- 1940-1944 -- Fiction.

Genre:

Spy fiction.

Historical fiction.

War fiction.

Language:

English

Abstract:

"After the Nazi victory over Poland in 1939, thousands of Poles were sent to Germany as slave laborers. From inside enemy territory, they found ways to get valuable information to resistance fighters in France. Paul Ricard, a French writer of detective novels, is drawn in to working in the resistance, as a spy against the Reich, and is charged with getting the information from the Polish prisoners to the Allied forces. Alongside him in the fight against Germany are an émigré girl and a mysterious Turkish woman who is in the contract espionage business."-- Provided by publisher.

Available:*

Library	Shelf Location	Shelf Number	Material Type	Item Barcode	Status
Searching... Chartwell Library	Adult Fiction	ADVENTURE FUR	Adult Book	A81214040B	Searching... Unknown
Searching... St Andrews Library	Adult Fiction	ADVENTURE FUR	Adult Book	A81214039B	Searching... Unknown
Searching... St Andrews Library	Adult Fiction	ADVENTURE FUR	Adult Book	A81214038B	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

From "America's preeminent spy novelist" ( The New York Times ) comes a fast-paced, mesmerizing thriller of the French resistance fighters working secretly and bravely to defeat Hitler.

Occupied Paris, 1942. Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off a strange-looking document to the unsuspecting novelist Paul Ricard. It looks like a blueprint of a part for a military weapon, one that might have important information for the Allied forces. Ricard realizes he must try to get the diagram into the hands of members of the resistance network.

As Ricard finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into anti-Nazi efforts and increasingly dangerous espionage assignments, he travels to Germany and along the escape routes of underground resistance safe houses to spy on Nazi maneuvers. When he meets the mysterious and beautiful Leila, a professional spy, they begin to work together to get crucial information out of France and into the hands of the Allied forces in London.

Genre:

Spy fiction.

Historical fiction.

War fiction.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Furst (A Hero of France) sets his latest espionage thriller in occupied Paris during the early 1940s. Paul Ricard, a spy novelist, witnesses an altercation between the Gestapo and a mysterious man, who hands Ricard a hand-drawn detonator schematic before being shot dead. Recognizing the importance of the document, Ricard uses his contacts to ferry the drawing to the English, and in the process becomes an agent for the resistance. Working with his friend Kasia, and under the direction of the alluring Leila, Ricard takes on assignment after assignment, the danger for his life ever increasing as he travels throughout France and Germany. Ricard's profession as a writer makes for a metafictional treat, as he pens a new spy novel while working for the Resistance, complete with story beats that echo his own journey. As always, Furst writes at breakneck speed, thrusting Ricard into adventure. This moves the action along, yet frequently sacrifices emotion, particularly when everyman Ricard is tasked with violent acts. While sure to please the author's many fans, the novel, replete with curvy women for Ricard to romance, nevertheless misses opportunities to dig deep within its protagonist, making for an exciting, if shallow, romp. (Nov.)

Kirkus Review

A crime writer in occupied France finds himself in a plot more dangerous than any he's dreamed up.Having been shot by the Gestapo, a man surreptitiously hands something to Paul Ricard just before dying: It appears to be a drawing specifying the technical details of a military weapon. After making some inquiries as to whom he might pass the papers to, Ricard finds himself volunteering for the Resistance and, under the guise of a journalist, traveling to Germany to make contact with the conscripted Polish workers who can explain the document. As with his other novels, Furst (A Hero of France, 2016, etc.) bases his tale on a lesser-known nugget of World War II history, in this case, the Polish laborers forced to build U-boats who took their revenge by smuggling technical information to the French Resistance, who forwarded it to British intelligence. But the tension has, for the moment, gone out of Furst's work, and the elliptical and compact writing style he developed has devolved into a kind of drifting, random series of scenes that never accumulate into more. There is still a fine sense of the details of life during wartime, the strange and pregnant heaviness that lies over the most banal activities. What's missing, though, are the moments when that heaviness bursts forth.This is a picture of war less as a series of impossible choices than as a vaguely romantic miasma. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Furst continues where he left off in A Hero of France (2016) with another gripping espionage tale showcasing ordinary Frenchmen working with the British to undermine the Nazi war effort. Paul Ricard is a spy novelist in the mode of Eric Ambler, but he is not involved in the Resistance himself until, like so many of Furst's heroes, he is thrust inadvertently into action. Walking beside the Seine, he instinctively helps a man running from the Gestapo and has a purloined document slipped into his hands after the man is shot. So begins a suspense-dripping, cat-and-mouse game in which Ricard, one small step at a time, finds himself a full-fledged Resistance agent, first slipping into Germany to take possession of a stolen torpedo, whose inner workings are much coveted by the Allies, and then running a safe house from where blown agents are exfiltrated out of harm's way. Working with an intrepid working-class Polish woman, Kaisa, and an aristocratic Frenchwoman, Leila, Ricard weaves his way through occupied Paris until, inevitably, his flimsy cover is finally blown. Many of Furst's signature themes are in full flower here wartime love affairs (warm bodies beneath cold covers as Klaxons blare on dark streets) and character interactions as brief as they are indelible but this time the special treat is the vivid detailing of Resistance operatives at work, well-oiled tradecraft blending seamlessly into everyday activities. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Everyone from Tom Hanks and David McCullough to you and me is a Furst fan, as his sales attest.--Bill Ott Copyright 2019 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Paul Ricard is a spy and detective fiction writer living in 1942 Nazi-occupied Paris. When he accidentally intercepts the plans for a German detonator and successfully delivers them to the British, he lands in the dangerous world of spies and the underground French Resistance. As each task he receives becomes more dangerous than the last, he risks coming to the attention of the occupying forces. Most of the characters in Furst's 13th spy novel (after A Hero of France) are one-dimensional and clichéd, the history is more of an afterthought than a part of the story, everything that happens is rather stereotypical, and the plot is choppy enough that it becomes a chore to follow. VERDICT This is not the master spy novelist at his finest, which may disappoint his many fans. While die-hard devotees will probably want to read it, newcomers should start with his earlier works. [See Prepub Alert, 4/28/19.]--Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

Excerpts

Alone in the afternoon after school, then as a grown man, Ricard walked. Sometimes his eyes discovered a face he wanted to study, sometimes a shop window, displaying things which he would never own. But he hardly cared; what he wanted to do was walk. Perhaps it helped that he was walking in Paris, one of the great places in the world to walk, but Ricard as a boy and then as a man didn't think about that, the monuments--cathedrals, fountains, sculptures of generals on horseback--all this was simply background scenery to Ricard. So he walked, and became a writer. Because, while walking, his mind was everywhere. In Chicago, in Siam, in a boudoir as a lady undressed, at the circus, on a battleship, in the jungle with a native guide--"Sir! A lion!"--in the snows of Russia as one of Napoleon's Corsican troopers, on New York's Lower East Side with gangsters--"Louie, we gotta rub him out"--at the North Pole with explorers and sled dogs, lost at sea on a sailing ship. Where didn't he go! Different now. As he walked, Ricard thought about his life, his friends, the women he knew, money--Too much about money! Think of something else!--and the occupation, though that thought, like the occupation itself, oppressed him. Still it was there: strolling German officers with their French girlfriends, Vichy types with their lapel pins of the Francisque, the double-bladed battle-axe. The sight of such lapel pins inflamed his heart. All his life, Ricard had been a peaceable sort, conflict upset him, but now he would have to fight; he'd avoided, like most Frenchmen, the idea of resistance, avoided it for two years, waiting for rescue, waiting for the Americans, as people put it, but he couldn't wait any longer because it would, in time, damage his soul. No, he told himself, he couldn't just write something hostile about the Germans, he would need to do something. To act. Excerpted from Under Occupation: A Novel by Alan Furst All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.