Dark Voyage : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Hopefully his previous work is better than this
Review: Alan Furst makes up for a mediocre first 200 pages with a heart-thumping, adrenaline-pumping ending. This was the first book of his that I have read, so I won't pass judgment on him as a writer just yet. Perhaps his earlier books were better than this one, which was entertaining at times, especially in the final chase and battle scene, but otherwise left me disappointed. There really wasn't a whole lot of suspense in this book, not much intrigue, and not much in the way of character development. It certainly had potential but never seemed to take advantage of it. The main character, Eric DeHaan, has the essential elements of a hero, yet we don't get deep enough into his psyche to really relate to him. And other than in the final scene, there is no build-up of anticipation that one would expect from a spy thriller. This book has the feel of a novel that could have been much more if the author had spent more time and effort on it.

Rating:
Summary: For the WWII Purist
Review: Alan Furst's "Dark Voyage" is a bluntly unadorned tale of World War II espionage. While WWII novels tend to favor heroic and highly visible land and sea military campaigns, Furst chooses the shadowy and unheralded Allied merchant marine fleet as the setting for this realistic spy story. Dutch merchant sailor Eric DeHann, captain of the Dutch tramp freighter Noordendam, is granted the Dutch Royal Navy commission he'd desired prior to Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. But with much of 1941 Europe under German occupation, DeHann's rank and position must stay as secret as the mission upon which he and his crew of fugitives are about to embark. Given a new paint job, the Noordendam is transformed into the Santa Rosa, sailing under the flag of neutral Spain. After taking on cargo in Portugal, DeHann and company head for the Nazi-controlled Baltic Sea with the goal of delivering their clandestine load to the Allied resistance operating in southern Sweden. Rich in the detail from the dark allies of northern Africa, to life aboard a tramp freighter from the Mediterranean, to the stormy seas of the Baltic, Furst succeeds in creating a fictional account of likely historical fact.

While there are some generally tense moments, "Dark Voyage" will mostly appeal to the aficionado of Naval history or World War II. The authentic but sometimes tedious nautical terms and minutia may leave the landlubber adrift, while the faithful depiction of a spy's life of interminable downtimes punctuated by relatively brief flashes of action may prove tiresome for some. And if in the reader is left with a frustrating sense of ambiguity, it is reflective of the often-thankless job of wartime intelligence that Furst captures so well. "Dark Voyage" is a painfully researched and well-executed effort, illuminating the overlooked contributions of WWII's unsung heroes of the merchant fleet. If you're expecting the glitz and glammor of James Bond or Jason Bourne, "Dark Voyage" will disappoint. But if your tastes run closer to LeCarre, and you prefer some history with your fiction, you'll likely find "Dark Voyage" an educational and enjoyable story of the Second World War.


Rating:
Summary: Furst's Dark World at War Goes to Sea
Review: Dark Voyage represents something of a departure from Alan Furst's previous series of historical spy novels set in Europe just before and during the Second World War. Typically, Furst's novels are land-based and are set in cafes, bars, and furtive meeting places in Bucharest, Prague, Berlin, and Paris. His protagonists are typically Polish, Rumanian, Russian, and French émigrés or refugees caught in a tangled web of espionage, and counter-espionage as the NKVD and other underground groups do battle with the Nazis. Deceit is the rule, not the exception. It is a world of night and dark shadows.

Dark Voyage, at least on the surface, is a bit different. Dark Voyage is not set amongst the smoky bistros of occupied Paris, Bucharest, or Warsaw. The action is set at sea, on board the M/V Noordendam, a Dutch cargo ship captained by Eric deHaan. The Noordendam, an aging tramp steamer nearing the end of its useful life at sea, is pressed into service by the Royal Navy. DeHaan and his crew and and passengers, including a Polish engineer, a Jewish medical orderly fleeing the Nazis, a beautiful Russian `journalist' fleeing in fear from her Soviet bosses, and others are asked to undertake three missions, each one more dangerous than the last. The Noordendam, repainted and sailing under the colors of a sunken, neutral Spanish merchant ship, the M/V Santa Rosa delivers munitions and supplies to the British Expeditionary Forces in Crete; transports British commandos to conduct a raid on the North African Coast in Tunisia; and then up through the Baltic Sea on a secret mission that could save Britain from annihilation during the blitz.

Despite this difference in setting the essential elements that render Furst's novels so downright enjoyable remain in place. First, Furst has never painted his characters in a superficial black-and-white way. His `heroes' are flawed and their motivation is often as self-interested as those of the `villains'. Furst's evocation of his characters is both subtle and nuanced. The Nazis were, in fact, true villains but the battles waged against them were not always undertaken by knights in shining armor but by incredibly flawed, if well-intentioned human beings. Second, Furst's prose is not at all tendentious or overly self-important. He paints extraordinarily vivid word pictures that capture not just the light but, more importantly, the shadows of a world engulfed in a horrible war. Third, life is not full of happy-endings. Not every story has the type of closure one might hope for. Furst does not go for cheap endings. The story may end, not always happily, but it is clear that the life of his characters will go on. The reader may hunger for more as he or she hits the last page, but for Furst at least, our endings are ahead of us. The war goes on and so must the lives of his characters.

Some have expressed disappointment in this novel or indicated that it does not quite live up to the high standards one has come to expect from Furst. I respectfully disagree. Heightened expectations often lead to disappointment. I think the high expectations one sets for a writer of Furst's caliber often leads to disappointment when each novel is not markedly better than the last. I, for one, enjoyed this book as much as his previous work. The setting and cast of characters was different to be sure but the quality of Furst's writing and his ability to tell a compelling story remains unchanged. I enjoyed this work.


Rating:
Summary: some things reviewers overlooked
Review: First off, I'd like to say that Alan Furst has a great talent as a story-teller. Despite what I'm about to say, I still read him and try to ignore the following.
I'm only about 50 pages into this but have been put off by errors
that detract from his credibility and I had to stop and because of them. If you are going to write a book about a merchant ship uou have to know about them. Most of his errors so far are in this category, but some are historical and geographical. A couple of examples of the former: "knots per hour". A knot is a nautical mile per hour so what you are left with is nautical miles per hour per hour.
Another is "celestial dead reckoning". The work celestial is used
in the term celestial navigation and everyone knows what that is.
Dead reckoning is a contracted form of deduced reckoning. Here you take the speed and direction of the vessel, throw in what you know of current and prevailing winds and DEDUCE yout position from that. No heavenly bodies at all. 'Nuff said.

Rating:
Summary: An Okay Read.
Review: I never heard of Furst, but Dark Voyage was well-reviewed in, I think, the New York Times, so I bought it, being particularly interested in the period and the locales, most of which I have visited. Briefly, a good story, well told, but ultimately somewhat disappointing because of the unclear and uninteresting ending. My final reaction: there was no purpose to the book, the characters were somewhat interesting, but stereotyped, and the plot is replicated in numerous movies and books.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but---
Review: I'm a big fan of Alan Furst. This was an enjoyable read, but I didn't think it was up to his past standards. The story wasn't as good and the characters not as well developed. Still I recommend it for those who like his previous books.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing to this long time Furst fan
Review: I've been a huge Furst fan since The Polish Officer, nearly ten years ago. I've been a pre-order devotee eagerly awaiting his next work for years.

This sparse work is very disappointing. It has its moments, especially the action aboard ship in the last quarter of the novel (more accurately, "novella"--it's only about 240 pp. if you take out the three blank pages at the beginning of each chapter), but does not create the character development or edgy suspense of Furst's prior works. As in The Polish Officer and The World at Night, the ending is also abrupt and untimely. The difference here is that the story takes much longer to become engrossing and is just beginning to pick up the pace when it ends. The prior two were engrossing from page one--great stories which just ended a bit abruptly.

Furst has made no bones about his desire to emulate Hemingway by telling his tale with a minimum of verbiage. He's gone much too far in that direction here. The characters are not fully developed, the suspense of the main character operating in the shadows while fearing discovery by the Gestapo or NKVD is absent and the story line never develops fully. This book is 35% or 40% shorter than Furst's best works and the story line, lack of character development, sketchy plot and abrupt ending just when the tale hits stride are the result.

Furst is an outstanding writer, but this is his worst novel in a decade. Very disappointing!

Rating:
Summary: World War II on the high seas
Review: Mr. Furst's previous atmospheric novels of the European area during and before World War II had been set on the continent, but his new one takes place on the water. Just as were his other works, the plot is almost subsidiary to the characters and the atmosphere he creates with his writing, which is uniformly excellent. His characters, even the minor ones, are carefully drawn and spring to life in full bloom. We loyal readers don't care where the tale leads us; we are just willing to follow along gratefully.

Rating:
Summary: This one's a complete novel!
Review: On his recent tour to promote "Dark Voyage," I heard Alan Furst say that his plots are based on real-life incidents which he uncovers via historical research. It seems that some incidents
support a more extensive plot than others, or perhaps the author can only expand so much on each one, but after reading most of his novels my reaction is, "Well, that's a short story stretched
out to the length of a novel ..."

I was happy to see this pattern broken with "Dark Voyage." This one stands on its own as a complete novel, and the novel upholds or exceeds the standards for description and character development that the author has set with his previous WWII era works. Having never been involved in warfare, I don't know for sure what's it's like, but I particularly enjoyed the way events in the novel illustrated the nature of warfare as requiring innovation, derring-do, and a healthy dose of "make-it-up-as-you-go-along." It seems as though "out of control" is the way war really is, versus the "plan the work and work the plan" mechanistic description some writers present.

Rating:
Summary: My first Furst
Review: This is my first time reading this author and boy, all I have to say is, "Where has he been?" What an absolute gem DARK VOYAGE turned out to be. It's a thriller set aboard the tramp ship Noordendam. The hero in this escapade is a Captain E.M. DeHaan and the action takes place at the beginning of the big WWII. But what makes this so interesting is not the setting as much as the relationships that blossom out of the voyage. Highly recommended along with another book that I've recently found (completely different but well written and VERY unusual nevertheless) called THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD.