Read: Blood of Victory by Alan Furst

Read: Blood of Victory by Alan Furst, 2002, 0375505741.

I had not read a Furst novel in a long time.  He had been one of my absolute favorites for quite a while.  The audiobook versions have always stellar.  Last weekend I had no  any other books to interest me so I grabbed this one off the bookshelf.  I bought this after I withdrew it from Litchfield Park.  I'm going to say this book is not as good as the other Furst books I have read. 

Another East European immigrant flees either the Soviets or the Nazis and lands in France.  Gets recruited by the Limeys - or other spy groups - and fights against the Krauts and their allies.  Great atmosphere and paranoia by Furst.

I.A Serebin fought in WW1, the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War.  But Serebin fame and love is as a poet and writer.  He works for the International Russian Union (IRU) and travels from Paris to Instabul in 1940 to check-up on the local IRU club.  The IRU club is bombed, Serebin is saved (who knows why), and is later recruited to work as a spy.  

Serebin hooks-up - professionally and sexually - with the wife of a French dilpomat who was sent to feel him out - no pun inteded.  They work together to pull in the remnants of an commercial spy network set-up by a wealthy Russian in the 1930s to advance his industrial interests.  Serebin and Frenchie are detailed to try and disrupt the Romanian oil reserves, oil production, or oil transport systems the Germans are reliant on.

Serebin finds information that leads to a plan to block the Danube to stop barge traffic upriver to Krautland.  Things happen, people are sneaky, fascists are casually ruthless, reference is made to a real-life Parisian restaurant shoot-out that Furst is fascinated with, Serebin ultimately escapes to Istanbul with Frenchie.