Spies of the Balkans

By: Alan Furst

Narrated by: Daniel Gerroll

Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Greece, 1940. Not sunny vacation Greece: northern Greece, Macedonian Greece, Balkan Greece, the city of Salonika. In that ancient port, with its wharves and warehouses, dark lanes and Turkish mansions, brothels and tavernas, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini's invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania, the first defeat suffered by the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe. But Adolf Hitler cannot tolerate such freedom; the invasion is coming; its only a matter of time, and the people of Salonika can only watch and wait.

At the center of this drama is Costa Zannis, a senior police official, head of an office that handles special political cases. As war approaches, the spies begin to circle, from the Turkish legation to the German secret service. There's a British travel writer, a Bulgarian undertaker, and more.

Costa Zannis must deal with them all. And he is soon in the game, securing an escape route from Berlin to Salonika, and then to a tenuous safety in Turkey, a route protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters. And hunted by the Gestapo.

Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a local shipping magnate.

Declared an incomparable expert at his game by The New York Times, Alan Furst outdoes even his own finest novels in this thrilling new book. With extraordinary authenticity, a superb cast of characters, and heart-stopping tension as it moves from Salonika to Paris to Berlin and back, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to right - in many small ways - the world's evil.

©2010 Alan Furst (P)2010 Simon & Schuster

Furst's Worst - Spoiler Alert

Sadly, this once terrific author has fallen into a formulaic rut. I have read or listened to all of his thrillers set in the WW2 era. The obligatory visit to Bistro Henninger was totally implausible and the major romance was worse than the most obvious chick lit. I mean really, he falls madly, permanently in love with the beautiful, blonde wife of the powerful rich man after only one glance. Plus, it turns out she has been in love with him since she was a school girl of 12. Give me a break. If I want more Alan Furst, I will go back to his earliest books. I gave it 2 stars because the political/thriller aspect of the plot was okay.

not quite...

i bought this book on an audible promotion - it was on discount and i was out out of units. i read it just after finishing dragon tattoo, and spies of the balkans did not compare well. the narrator was overly laconic or low affect, and the story, while interesting, was not gripping. i had to listen and re-listen numerous times because it did not hold my attention. the listening stretched longer than most books, and i finally got my new credits about the time my listening to this book came to an end. i found one of the new jack reacher novels and could not put it down. this did not measure up well either to girl with the dragon tattoo or jack reacher. sigh.

forced and awful love/sex

I don't know what was worse, the completely unnecessary and uninteresting love interest that always seems to appear in his books, and almost never adds any value whatsoever to the story. I enjoy the books but I fast forward through this BS. and I am not a prude. but the second bad part, is the narrator. Lord what happened to George Goodall. this dude forgets which voice he's supposed to be using. there are times when he'll be using a voice for one character and then switch The Voice so that you can't even follow who's saying what when. apologize for the typos, but this is voice to text as I'm driving on an interstate