Alan Furst (born February 20, 1941) is an American writer born in New York City and known for his spy fiction set in Europe before and during World War II. Usually the plots are sinister and fraught with cynicism while at the same time being overlapped by grand descriptions of European culture. The usual theme is of a flawed, (but eminently likable), competent (but usually not unbelievably so) character caught up in the epic struggle and doing his part. His work has earned him the Helmerich award in 2011.
Works include:
- Night Soldiers (1988)
- Dark Star (1991)
- The Polish Officer (1995)
- The World at Night (1996)
- Red Gold (1999)
- Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
- Blood of Victory (2003)
- Dark Voyage (2004)
- The Foreign Correspondent (2006)
- The Spies of Warsaw (2008)
- Spies of the Balkans (2010)
- Mission to Paris (2012)
- Midnight in Europe (2014)
- A Hero of France (2016)
- Under Occupation (2019)
Tropes in Alan Furst novels:
- Anachronic Order: The novels are not written in any particular order, but as they are mostly standalones, this does not present a problem to the casual reader. The only exception is Red Gold, which is a direct sequel to The World at Night.
- Antihero: The protagonist is usually this.
- Badass Bookworm: Several characters
- Big Bad: Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin
- Black-and-Gray Morality
- The Chessmaster: His books are stuffed to the brim with them.
- City of Spies: Every city in Europe.
- Dirty Communists: Furst's Communists are really creepy.
- The Empire: Russia and Germany
- The Federation: Britain and France
- Evil Versus Evil: Dirty Communists and Those Wacky Nazis
- Gambit Pileup
- Gay Paree: Honestly, Furst seems to have a crush on Paris.
- Government in Exile
- Heroic Neutral: Several of the characters start as this
- La Résistance: The good guys
- Little Hero, Big War
- Once an Episode: sooner or later, someone will visit the Brasserie Heininger in Paris. Sometimes more than once.
- Ruritania: The best way to describe the little countries all about. A lot of them are Balkan or Eastern European countries ruled by petty Glorious Leader s of varying degrees of evilness but seldom really comparable to the Big Bads.
- Sacred Hospitality: In one novel, an OSS agent in the Balkans is sheltered by a fishing village. Sometime later the villagers discover that left on the shore for them is a feast (smuggled in by the OSS) with a note left to them thanking them. The villagers thereupon wonder what fabulously rich refugee they had obtained the gratitude of.
- Secret Police: the Gestapo and the NKVD
- Techno Babble: Furst fans love his realistic tradecraft.
- The 'Verse: The novels are connected by the afore-mentioned Brasserie Heininger and also by a web of inter-connecting characters appearing in multiple stories.
- Those Wacky Nazis: of course
- Ye Goode Olde Days: Furst novels practically drip with nostalgia about Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.
