by Alan Furst
Part of Night Soldiers, book 3
First published 2001
Captain Alexander de Milja watches Warsaw crumble under Wehrmacht boots in September 1939. The Polish underground recruits him for intelligence work, starting with a desperate mission to save the national gold reserve. He must smuggle the treasure to safety aboard a refugee train bound for Bucharest. The assignment launches de Milja into a shadow war across Nazi-occupied Europe. He operates in the dark corners of Paris, moving through black-market bistros and back alleys. He returns to the tenements of his native Warsaw. He joins partisan fighters in the brutal Ukrainian forests. At Calais Harbor, British bombers rain destruction around him. De Milja navigates a world stripped of conventional rules, where survival depends on cunning and luck. Every contact might be an enemy. Every safe house could become a trap. The intelligence officer fights a war where betrayal comes as easily as breathing.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, military-fiction, action, world-war-ii, espionage
Vibes: atmospheric, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, survival
Setting: Bucharest, Calais Harbor, Paris, Ukraine, Warsaw
Period: 1939
294 pages · Paperback · Random House Publishing Group
Content warnings: violence, war