Furst, Alan. Night Soldiers. Random House, New York 1988. F;12/25.

I’ve said I have a bits-and-pieces acquaintance with history: one university course (Canada), any familiarity mostly from TV, spotty reading here and there. So with a historical novel like this one I’m jumping back and forth to Google to try to untangle fiction and facts. Mr. Furst in this earliest of his Night Soldiers series kept me busy that way. But some wonderful fiction feels like it’s about the setting, the feeling and atmosphere of its time (McCarthy’s Orchard Keeper for example). This meticulously researched story oozes events and language and almost the smell of those prewar and war years as I imagine them 80 years later. This one has complex plot, realistic characters, and a rich emotional experience along with the history lessons I needed. I was quite surprised.

If you haven’t read Night Soldiers and plan to here’s a two-paragraph PLOT ALERT: Bulgarian Khristo Stoianev after a group of Nazis kill his brother in his hometown in 1934 is recruited into NKVD Soviet spy training and joins a group of three others who become main characters. He is clever and well enough trained to become a protégé of Sascha, one of Stalin’s intelligence officers, and is then sent to Spain where Russia is fighting a losing battle in the Civil War. Khristo escapes to France where he tries to live a normal life as a waiter on the edge of Paris pre-war social life and falls in love but is betrayed into prison for several years. He joins the French resistance and works with a bored American advertising agent who has become part of the precursor of the CIA.

There’s a fascinating description of the intelligence contest in France between the Allies with French resistance, and Nazis as the tide of the war starts to turn in the early 1940s. French saboteurs with a single trick disable a railroad roundhouse mechanism, which delays delivery of weapons to a particular Normandy Beach. Later Khristo spying for Russia in central Europe barely escapes to the Danube River. He is headed for the Black Sea to meet his former mentor Sascha who has been sent to Siberia but is able to create an encrypted show and tell which reveals terrifying deeds of Soviet spies. In the final scene Khristo lands in New York and meets a woman he knew in Spain. END PLOT ALERT.

Detailed descriptions of early spy training near the story’s start dragged a bit, but once Khristo put his training to use good and bad luck and the murderous danger he experienced raise his character well above typical banal spy heroes. Furst writes with a command of geography and history but knows also how to ignite a deadly or hideous scene with poetic conviction:

Standing by the kneeling figure, he looked back at Sascha, who nodded affirmatively. Gently, he pushed the head forward until the forehead was only a few inches from the floor, then took the orange hair tied back in a red ribbon and tucked it in front of her shoulder, revealing a white neck. Khristo felt Sascha take him by the back of the hand and turn it palm up. He had bony fingers, cold to the touch, and a grip like steel. From his pocket he took a Nagant revolver, slapped it hard onto Khristo’s hand, then stepped back.

Of prisoners in Siberia:

In summer they were tied naked to a pole so that the mosquito swarms could eat on them for hours. But what drove them crazy, they said, was the sound of it. The falsetto whirr in the ears.

Commentary suggests that there are pacing problems with some episodes, but I found only one such. I had a bit of trouble keeping track of the characters but that’s true of a lot of complex fiction. I’m tempted to carry on to one or two of the other novels in this series of 14 or so. Others have reported that the first one or two are the best. If Dark Voyage is as good as Night Soldiers it would be worth looking into.

I’d give Alan Furst my highest recommendation for his spy fiction, this story in particular. He really captures and holds interest. I don’t think you have to be a World War II history buff to enjoy and suspend disbelief reading the dramatic events and great writing of this story. I hope you enjoy it.

9.2/9.3