Mission to Paris: A Novel [Hardcover]

For true believers, nothing is better than a new Alan Furst book. Once more, Europe is on the edge of World War II. Once more, someone who wasn't planning on it is drawn into the fight. And once more, you want to join him and enlist.

Fredric Stahl, hero of this one, is a little different from Furst's usual military men and cops. He's a celebrity, a Hollywood star, an Austrian-born leading man now in Paris to make a movie, loaned by Warner Brothers to Paramount in return for Gary Cooper. Stahl recalls the carefree Paris of the 1920s, where he first got into film, but now wonders how wise it is to visit the Paris of 1938.

Now there's foreboding of war: Hitler has demanded and got Czechoslovakia, and some, but not enough, see the Anglo-French appeasement will merely encourage a bully who feeds on fear. The French call up the reserves, then let them go, but the crisis puts everyone's nerves on edge.

Not everyone thinks war is inevitable. But the parties wanting to avoid it at any cost, the Franco-German friendship types, the war-is-too-terrible-and-we-must-never-fight-another types - are, rather than the usual left-wing pacifists, all directed and funded by Berlin. Publishers are being paid off to manipulate French public opinion. Pro-fascist French industrialists are in on it. And wouldn't this cabal love to have the movie star Stahl come out against war?

Stahl is first cultivated, then stalked by friends of the Reich. Then an American consul asks if Stahl can help his adopted homeland. Stahl wants nothing to do with the Nazis, but realizes it's time to make a stand, and the way he can help is by acting - going along with them, acting like he doesn't mind to carry out a secret mission. Meanwhile, though, his film friends wonder which side he's really on.

What's great here is how chilling Furst makes the Nazi approaches to Stahl - not the threats, but the inducements, offers of meals, parties and luxurious travel by loathsome people. Perhaps because they're fresher, perhaps because they're subtle and well-done, because we know where the history leads, these are somehow scarier than more familiar scenes of Nazi menace. And the bonhomie is only skin deep; the threats, the menace and the violence lurk just underneath.

Furst adroitly shows the Nazi propaganda paving the way for war. What's in their newspapers and films, their endless and false claims of the persecution of Germans in neighboring lands. And, most chillingly, their certitude that there will be a war, that they'll win it and that anyone who's smart, and knows what's good for them, will join them now.

Furst, who started getting into this in "The Spies of Warsaw", does a service laying out the twists and turns of the French situation leading up to the war, which most Americans know little about. Leon Blum, Edouard Daladier, the Popular Front, Paris newspapers of the right, left and center; tycoons like Taittinger, Michelin, Coty, and Hennessy: he shows how they all fit together, the growing rift among the French about whether to even resist the Nazis at all, and the fateful price the world will pay for their divide.

Germany conquered France easily, Furst suggests, because the French right saw the Nazis as allies and for years deliberately sapped their own nation's will and ability to fight against them. (Stalin's Communists were guilty of the same thing.)
The plot lets Furst write once more about Paris, his favorite setting. There's the obligatory scene at the Brasserie Heininger, where a single bullet hole in the mirror - ah, but real Furst fans don't need this sentence finished, because we've read it three or four times before. (But try the choucroute!)

A cameo appearance by Count Polanyi from "Kingdom of Shadows", whom Stahl suspects is not just a Hungarian diplomat. And of course, a tramp steamer out of Constanta . . . a lot of delicious meals and unusual Continental booze like strega and slivovitz . . . languidly smoked cigarettes . . a pistol in a suitcase . . . a garter belt slowly unhooked while outside, the rain clouds form over Europe. Admit it, you love it. I'm helpless before it.

P.S. Stahl's love interest, Renate Steiner, bears the name of the composer who wrote the score to "Casablanca" - Max Steiner. There's no better place for a Casablanca nod than an Alan Furst novel.

Allan Furst's WWII-era espionage novels are always entertaining and "Mission to Paris" is no exception. In the tradition of the author's previous work, there is a male protagonist working against the Nazis in a European setting (Paris and Berlin mostly this time), with a supporting cast of interesting characters (friends, lovers, collaborators and conniving opponents with vicious intent). Fans of the genre know that Furst's books are a kind of literary comfort food--this one is French bistro cuisine all the way.

More specifically, the focus of "Mission..." is film actor Fredric Stahl, an Austrian-born emigre who has built a successful career in Hollywood and finds himself, in mid-1938, loaned out by his studio to a French film company to star in a "Beau Geste" kind of flick that ironically is a commentary on the tragedies of war. Arriving in Paris, Stahl soon finds himself the center of attention for a group of German sympathizers bent on keeping France from opposing Hitler's ambitions in Europe. Stahl's own nascent political views are very much in the other direction and he is gradually dragged into a propaganda war that is heating up in Paris and elsewhere. All of this happens, while he undertakes the demanding work of making the film, "Apres La Guerre". Eventually, and very much against his own will and inclination, Stahl's position as a highly visible public figure leads to increasingly dangerous involvement with the Nazis.

While "Mission to Paris" is a good read, I found it to have less edge and dynamic tension than most of its predecessors. The protagonist, for example, is a decent and interesting guy, but doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the chandelier at times. He's a bit jaded and ambivalent about most everything in his rather soft life, but is definitely committed to maintaining his creature comforts which include wine, women and food, more or less in that order. Stahl's anti-Nazism is instinctive but not especially active or passionate, even at the end of the story when the situation becomes increasingly dangerous for him and his nearest and dearest.

The opposition (Nazis mostly) doesn't didn't seem that compelling either. The Paris-based German spies and operatives are often bumblers and/or cartoonish. The most dangerous among this crowd turns out to be a bit lazy in the end. Secondary characters and their connections with protagonist Stahl are not always convincing (for me, at least).

Despite my qualms, author Furst has provided an interesting context for the book--the cafes, hotels and boulevards of Paris, and the backdrop of pre-WWII filmmaking is extremely interesting--engrossing even. Overall, this is a pleasant and enjoyable read, even if it doesn't always stir you.

It is autumn 1938 and the German government has decided to make Paris sneeze violently as it carries on its preparations for war. Determined to avenge the ignominy of Versailles, the German Foreign Ministry sought to destabilize the already fragile French Third Republic by co-opting willing and unwilling fifth columnists to do their bidding. It was a cold war designed to soften the French before the onslaught of the real war that everyone seemed to know was coming. That is the historical back drop for Alan Furst's excellent new novel, "Mission to Paris."

Furst comes from a line of writers that can be traced back to both Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Like Ambler, Furst often takes an unassuming, or unwitting civilian and immerses him in a world of mystery and intrigue in pre-World War II Europe. Mission to Paris follows this format and Furst does it in such a masterful way that I think it fair to say that Furst truly is worthy of the comparison to Ambler. He stands on his own now and really does not need to be compared to anyone to establish his bona fides.

Mission to Paris is set (as the title suggests) in Paris with side-trips to Berlin, Morocco, and Hungary. The unwitting protagonist is one Fredric Stahl. Born in Austria, Stahl made his way to California as a young man and is now one of Hollywood's leading men. He is sent to Paris by his studio head Jack Warner to do a movie with an international cast. The German foreign ministry has decided that Stahl should be enlisted to aid them in their cause and that sets up the story to follow.

I think it unwise to get into plot details so I'll simply state that Furst's strong point has always been how he sets the scene. His descriptions of the streets of Paris and Berlin reek of authenticity. Similarly, Furst has a keen eye for the inner life of his protagonists. Almost invariably Furst manages to convey a real sense of how those protagonists think and feel. Both of these elements of his writing generally dominate his plotting and are primarily responsible for getting the reader to turn to the next page. In this instance, Furst takes a frog in the pot of water approach to his story. Stahl's introduction to the dark world of Germany's `political cold warfare' is set on low and finally brought to a boil. Stahl's reactions to the heat being turned up is handled exceptionally well. The story kept me engaged and the ending was very well done.

In addition to Stahl, Furst introduces us to a very well-drawn cast of characters, especially that of Olga Orlova. Orlova, a Russian émigré living in Berlin is reputed to be Russian novelist Mikhail Lermontov's daughter. A film star in Germany she is known to be on of Hitler's favorite actresses. She may or may not be everything she appears to be and Stahl's relationship with her is one of the keys to the plot. This was of particular interest to me because it appears clear that Orlova is based on the very real Olga Chekhova, Anton Chekhov's niece, a well-known actress in pre-war Germany and quite likely a Soviet spy. In my 2004 review of historian Anthony Beevor's excellent The Mystery of Olga Chekhova I noted that the real Olga's story reminded me "of the noir-like novels of Alan Furst, whose tales of Soviet espionage and counter-espionage center on tales of similar acts of espionage taken on by Russian and other East European émigrés in the 1930's and 1940's". Needless to say I was delighted by this coincidence and it confirmed for me what I always suspected, that Furst's attention to historical detail is very strong.

Ernest Hemingway once said that "[I]f you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." Alan Furst's "Mission to Paris" is a moveable feast in its own right. Enjoy. L. Fleisig

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