Tony Bird was was born, brought up and educated in London.
Joined family garage business then moved to retail and property development for Chevron oil company operating in various management roles in UK and mainland Europe; changed careers and joined the Confederation of British Industry holding several senior management posts including UK network and development (including specialist book and magazine publications)
Retired in 2012 .
Married with two grown-up sons.
Interests include reading, book collecting, horticulture, travel, distance walking, politics and blues music.
Over the past thirty years Alan Furst has focused his novels on the impact of the Nazi regime on mainland Europe. His latest, his fifteenth, is set primarily in occupied France and particularly in Paris, a setting that Furst describes vividly, evoking time and place with considerable skill.
It’s 1942 and Furst’s protagonist is a 40-year-old crime writer, Paul Ricard, who having escaped capture during the German invasion is keen to get back into the fight. His opportunity comes when he encounters a dying man in the street who entrusts him with a blueprint of a secret weapon. This leads to contact with the French spy network and onto a series of assignments starting with the source of the blueprint. Over the next two-years Ricard encounters a range of characters some friendly, some not as he travels, figuratively and actually, along the resistance path.
This book has many of the elements which you expect in a novel by Alan Furst. Scheming Gestapo, brave partisans, risky ’safe-houses,’ unexpected betrayals these are all in evidence. However, people appear to move around avoiding capture far too easily. This is a concise historical-spy novel (just over two-hundred pages), though perhaps lacks sufficient elements of risk and danger; with continuity being an issue as the narrative progresses. Despite these criticisms, I enjoyed this fast-paced and engaging read.
Though anyone coming to this as their first Alan Furst novel, may have cause to question his stellar reputation. But then again, they may simply get hooked by his descriptions of life at that desperate time, as so many of us have in the past, and simply rub their hands at the thought of 14 more (and better) novels to try.
