The Polish Officer

This is an excellent spy novel. This is an excellent war-story. But above all it is an excellent tale from an excellent author


Fine novel of espionage in Occupied Europe   January 20, 2001
15 out of 15 found this review helpful

This is the first novel I've read by Alan Furst, and I was pleased to find that the golden opinions which Furst has been winning (comparisons with Le Carre, among others) seem to be justified. He writes unobtrusively well, and the period in which the novel is set offers almost too much material for the thriller writer.

For the English or American reader, life in Occupied Europe from the perspective of those who lived there is still an unfamiliar angle from which to view the Second World War, and I found Furst's treatment a refreshing change from the usual Anglocentric perspective. There are no English or American characters of any significance; instead the focus of interest is upon the emigres and displaced persons, the former military officers and bandits who find themselves more or less willingly drawn into an apparently hopeless resistance to the occupying Nazi and Soviet forces in France, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. It is a small triumph that Furst makes this unfamiliar material compelling to the English reader.

I would add only one caveat; the author's somewhat curious decision to limit his period of interest to that between roughly 1938 and 1941, (broadly, that in which the Axis powers were most clearly in the ascendant) although defensible in dramatic terms, left this reader at the novel's end with a strong feeling that the whole story had not been told. I understand that Alan Furst's other, and now rather numerous, novels are set in the same period, and one wonders how long it will be before he begins to feel constrained by this self-imposed restriction. Certainly the central character of The Polish Officer is strong enough to justify at least one sequel, and perhaps to set the mind at rest.

It is a measure of the author's success that one badly wants to know for certain that his hero survives the war. I will certainly be seeking out this author's other books, though I will be surprised if they are superior.


Good story, very dodgy historical research   November 28, 2000
7 out of 17 found this review helpful

Alan Furst is a good author - well worth reading. This is a good story but he does let himself down with his research - the main bit which grated with me was his description of Lancaster bombers attacking the Operation Sea Lion fleet - I don't think they were in service until 1942. Makes me wonder what other research he skimped on...