Under Occupation: A Novel - Hardcover

An Amazon Best Book of December 2019: Alan Furst once told Newsweek "My job is to take the reader for a ride, to somewhere he or she has never been and let them walk around in there." Job well done in his latest historical spy novel, Under Occupation. Paul Ricard, a moderately successful spy novelist, witnesses a man being chased through the streets of Paris by the Gestapo before being felled by gunfire. Collapsing by Paul’s feet, the dying man surreptitiously passes along something which Paul later realizes is the schematic of a weapon, a weapon that ought to be in Allied hands. Unable to find someone to get it to the Allies, Paul joins the Resistance himself, moving from writing about men of action to becoming one himself. Under Occupation showcases much of what has made Furst a bestselling author, most notably a plot based on a little-known aspect of history. In this case, it’s the Polish prisoners who were conscripted to work on German weaponry only to smuggle information about those weapons to the French Resistance, who in turn smuggled it to British Intelligence. Elsewhere, Furst’s typically atmospheric, and meticulously detailed, accounts of the mundanities of day-to-day life in Occupied Paris give way to scenes of terror and intrigue just as an Everyman goes from observer on the sidelines to death-defying participant in the war. If Paris is much more changed than our hero, it’s a small quibble in an otherwise entertaining spy saga. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review

Alan Furst, widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel, is the author of A Hero of France, Midnight in Europe, Mission to Paris, and many other bestsellers. Born in New York, he lived for many years in Paris, and now lives on Long Island.