Lead Review

• Book: Mission to Paris
• Location: Europe, Paris
• Author: Alan Furst

Furst is often compared to Eric Ambler and Graham Greene because of his remarkable command of the dark moral atmosphere of Europe in the 1930s. But he commands another kind of atmosphere as well. Walking on the Left Bank, Stahl gathers scattered images into a lovely Paris bouquet: the “bittersweet autumn air, fallen leaves plastered to the cobblestones, lamp-lit rooms seen from the street – a night that sent his spirit aloft in a kind of melancholy elation.” The air “smelled of a thousand years of rain dripping on stone, smelled of rough black tobacco and garlic and drains, of perfume.” It was, Stahl thinks, “as though a door to heaven had been left open.” This is the romantic Paris to make a tourist weep. Later, when the fog settles on the Luxembourg Gardens and the streetlamps grow dim, it’s also the shadowy, faintly menacing Paris to thrill any armchair spy who has ever buckled a trench coat or fumbled in a secret pocket for the forged passport and the emergency stash of zlotys. NY Times

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