Grecia, 1940. En la ciudad portuaria de Salónica, una guerra secreta está a punto de estallar. Mientras Adolf Hitler planea invadir los Balcanes, los espías cercan la ciudad. En los burdeles y en las trastiendas de oscuras barberías los sobres pasan de mano en mano, y los susurros corren por tabernas y locales nocturnos. Costa Zannis, un o?cial de policía de avanzada edad, regresa a Salónica tras luchar contra las tropas de Mussolini. Costa es un hombre valioso, con contactos en las más altas esferas y en los bajos fondos. Pronto se ve envuelto en un operativo para ayudar a refugiados judíos huidos de Alemania. Mientras la guerra amenaza la ciudad, el erotismo y la pasión crecen entre sus habitantes. Tres mujeres cambiarán los últimos años de la vida de Costa: una dama británica expatriada, una mujer de fama poco respetable y la esposa del mayor magnate del lugar.

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )