Mission to Paris
By Alan Furst
- Release Date: 2012-06-12
- Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers
Description
“A master spy novelist.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Page after page is dazzling.”—James Patterson
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Late summer, 1938. Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie. The Nazis know he’s coming—a secret bureau within the Reich has been waging political warfare against France, and for their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of influence. What they don’t know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service run out of the American embassy. Mission to Paris is filled with heart-stopping tension, beautifully drawn scenes of romance, and extraordinarily alive characters: foreign assassins; a glamorous Russian actress-turned-spy; and the women in Stahl’s life. At the center of the novel is the city of Paris—its bistros, hotels grand and anonymous, and the Parisians, living every night as though it were their last. Alan Furst brings to life both a dark time in history and the passion of the human hearts that fought to survive it.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Alan Furst's Midnight in Europe.
Praise for Mission to Paris
“The most talented espionage novelist of our generation.”—Vince Flynn
“Vividly re-creates the excitement and growing gloom of the City of Light in 1938–39 . . . It doesn’t get more action-packed and grippingly atmospheric than this.”—The Boston Globe
“One of [Furst’s] best . . . This is the romantic Paris to make a tourist weep. . . . In Furst’s densely populated books, hundreds of minor characters—clerks, chauffeurs, soldiers, whores—all whirl around his heroes in perfect focus for a page or two, then dot by dot, face by face, they vanish, leaving a heartbreaking sense of the vast Homeric epic that was World War II and the smallness of almost every life that was caught up in it.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A book no reader will put down until the final page . . . Critics compare [Alan] Furst to Graham Greene and John le Carré [as] a master of historical espionage.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“Alan Furst’s writing reminds me of a swim in perfect water on a perfect day, fluid and exquisite. One wants the feeling to go on forever, the book to never end. . . . Furst is one of the finest spy novelists working today.”—Publishers Weekly
Reviews
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4By FunnelEffectNot tops for his opus, but still a good read.A treasure to read!
5By Dough DRTI believe someone has mentioned the ending - it's not satisfying, necessarily, but the book was so well written, the characters so wonderful, that I don't mind. It's definitely worth a read - chilling to know what it was like in Paris just before the war. When you had to look over your shoulder at all times, and depend on the kindness of strangers. How lucky we are, those of us who have not experienced that horror!Mission to Paris
2By Found59Surprisingly flat and predictable coming from the writer of The Polish Officer. It felt like reading a different author.Not the Best but Still Very Good
4By sweetspacemonkeyIn the old days Furst didn't try to over explain things which he has gone away from which is a drawback of this book. This is just a good book. His other works are great.Mission to Paris
5By PconsfHow can you rank books on an ABCDF scale when that author is all A's? I suppose I'd call this one an A- but still fantastic. Alan Furst is he best, most subtle author ever in the suspense genre. Every one of his books give you the atmospheric of being wherever the story is - Berlin, Moscow, Madrid and especially Paris. You can smell the onions and garlic cooking, and taste the red wine. Most important, feel the tension the hero goes through as he's threatened or put in danger. Mission to Paris's Stahl is a pretty normal guy, for a movie actor, but he cannot avoid the Nazis in Paris as they are relentless to get him to help their propaganda cause, or to be killed. My opinion: the best book Furst ever wrote is Night Soldiers - it's got it all. KGB recruitment in Bulgaria, war scenes in The Spanish Civil War, pre-war in Paris, French resistance, it's fantastic. A long but perfect novel - every page, scene and dialog is interesting. I've read all of his and they are all great. Enjoy!Mission in Paris - Furst
2By Lancelot de FranceIn e-book form, this novel is missing pages. Especially frustrating, the ending is missing so I have to imagine Stahl and Renate escaped and lived happily ever after. Definitely worth reading and enjoyable, the pages I could read.Missing pages
1By jlauranceThis book is missing several pages including the entire dénouement.Mission to Paris
1By Bobby SeeBook is boring.......had repetitive and missing pages. Very disappointing and a waste of my time.Mission To Paris
1By Dbones1996Based on reviews written and the first few pages that I read, I thought this book would be an interesting read. Wrong. While I had high hopes when I began, this became very predictable, trite, superficial and boring. And that was before I began to see duplicated pages along with missing pages. Don't waste your money.Mission to Paris
1By Madra dubhI agree with the other negative reviews here. Poorly edited, dull, superficial and entitrley without suspense, I felt condescended to as a reader, but ultimately just cheated of the time it took to drag myself through this pointless story. Yes, Mr. Furst can do better. Let's hope he will.Not nearly good enough
1By JudynovemberI am a real fan of Furst's work and have read all of his novels. This one is very superficial, nothing like the others. I am very disappointed in it.Mission To Paris
1By RedslsI kept reading it only because I thought it would get better. It didn't.A good read
4By French Lover from the BronxI read the nytimes book review and decided that this would be a good spy story with Paris in the background. I do wish he had made it a bit more complicated once they got out of France. I did enjoy the descriptions of Paris and pre war France. I will read another of his books.Mission to Paris
5By True Historic Fiction FanAlan Furst is the master. This book is great. The reader is placed in pre WW II Paris and the writing is on the wall re France's future. The not so funny thing about WWII is that there are good guys and bad guys. A previous reviewer suggests the characters depicted herein are one dimensional. I'd humbly suggest you are either for or against the Nazis. There are no in betweens. Furst is a genius at placing the reader in a dark alley, expecting to run into Bogart or Bergman around the next corner. This book is taut and a page turner. I stayed up too late to finish it but it was worth it. I could have lived w/o the early "carnival act" which is my one criticism on this otherwise excellent novel of historic fiction. Long live Alan Furst!!! A grateful and dedicated reader in Portland OR.An obvious tale
2By Rwag100Furst is usually better than this. The plot has almost no tension. The dialogue is trite and the ending has no real catharsis.Mission to Paris
3By Jean bridgeAlan Furst's latest is nowhere near as good as his previous work. He consistently tells us rather than shows us, his characters are one-dimensional, and the plot simple. Mission to Paris reads like a novel written for Americans by a European who grossly underestimates the intelligence if his audience. A disappointment.Mission to Paris
3By ThuffmansI read a review somewhere that compared this guy to LeCarre. So I bought the book. Big mistake. In what LeCarre novel would he feel the need translate "Chef de Cabinet", "Après la Guerre" or find it necessary to explain to his readers that falafel ("Stahl's favorite") is "...mashed chickpeas fried up in little pancakes."? sheesh. Not good writing pitched at a low brow audience with middle brow aspiration.
