Rating: 
Summary: A Unique Perspective on World War II
Review: "The Polish Officer" offers American readers a new slant on World War II: the perspective of life inside occupied Europe, with no American characters coming to the rescue. Instead, "The Polish Officer" is peopled by displaced persons, former military officers, and bandits, all drawn into a seemingly hopeless resistance to the occupying Nazi and Soviet forces in Poland, Russia, and France. That Furst is able to create a story from this world that is appealing to American readers speaks to his prowess as a writer. This is a beautifully-written book, although a bit weak on plot. However, since the book ends early in the war, it left me wondering how the central character made out.
Rating:
Summary: A Unique Perspective on World War II
Review: "The Polish Officer" offers American readers a new slant on World War II: the perspective of life inside occupied Europe, with no American characters coming to the rescue. Instead, "The Polish Officer" is peopled by displaced persons, former military officers, and bandits, all drawn into a seemingly hopeless resistance to the occupying Nazi and Soviet forces in Poland, Russia, and France. That Furst is able to create a story from this world that is appealing to American readers speaks to his prowess as a writer. This is a beautifully-written book, although a bit weak on plot. However, since the book ends early in the war, it left me wondering how the central character made out.
Rating: 
Summary: Espionage and intrigue in Occupied Europe
Review: Alan Furst has apparently been writing books of this genre for some years now. The plots all take place during the period just prior to World War II, or the during the war itself. Each of the characters is somewhat compromised, morally or otherwise. Here, the main character is Captain Alexander de Milja, a Polish army officer whose main duty, in peacetime, was as a cartographer and intelligence officer. Now that the war has started, he's helping defend Warsaw, but he's soon called away to escort a supply of gold and specie across the border into Romania. From there, his bosses in the military intelligence bureau wish him to spy on the Germans, first in Paris, later in other parts of France and elsewhere. He moves with ease from one theater of the war to another, repeatedly surviving when others around him are captured or killed. He has affairs, makes and loses friends, watches as others are betrayed by traitors, even executes said traitor himself on one occasion.The one thing the book does extremely well is portray the lives of ordinary people during the war. The author seems to have a view of the mundane populace of an occupied country, and what they do or say or when they go on vacation. When they spy for de Milja, they do so for mundane reasons, for the most part, and their reactions when they get caught aren't heroic, for the most part, either. The novel is told in a series of grays (if they ever make a movie, it'll have to be black and white) with few if any colors in the landscape. If I have a serious criticism, it's that there really isn't a plot. Instead, the story is basically a series of incidents involving a single individual, and if he'd structured it differently it could be a short story collection, plotwise. That's how connected the various plots are. In spite of that, I enjoyed it a great deal, and would recommend the book.
Rating:
Summary: Another excellent "spy" novel
Review: Alan Furst has the great talent of reinvigorating the "spy" novel genre. He creates atmospheric works, and places his well-drawn characters into the middle of the World War II murkiness of intelligence gathering and action. His main characters tend to be introspective, moody fellows, with women to match, and a cast of finely sketched and fleshed-out minor players. We're involved in the tangled mess of central Europe during the dark days of Nazi occupation, and we seem to move effortlessly from there into Paris and the French and Belgian countryside. These books are intelligently written, and create the wish that the stories would go on long after the book is finished.
Rating:
Summary: Ignoble aspects of WW2
Review: Alan Furst's "The Polish Officer" is a seamy portrayal of the untoward and often untold facets of World War 2. The story revolves around the exploits of fictious character the patriotic Capt. Alexander de Milja of the Polish military.
De Milja, a cartographer in the intelligence services is a product of the union of a university professor and a daughter in an aristoctratic family. He miraculously survived the destruction of Warsaw, courtesy of the Nazi blitzkrieg. He was given a choice by his superiors to serve on the front line and face certain death or serve as a spy. Choosing espionage, his initial mission was to direct the tranportation of the Polish treasury, 12 million in gold bars, to Romania.
The book proceeds to follow de Milja through Poland, France and the Ukraine as he directs a spy network designed to undermine the hated Nazis. Furst succeeds in humanizing his characters including the Germans as he graphically recreates the terror and horrors of this clandestine aspect of war. He concludes his novel somewhat abruptly with no salvation for de Milja but with hope that he might persevere and survive.
Rating:
Summary: Period Piece = Palpable
Review: Alan Furst's series of novels set in 1933-1941 Europe are fantastic on a number of levels: the noir tone of the book, the palpable dread that overlays the whole time period, the complex relationships among people of various nationalities in a highly fragmented continent. The Polish Officer begins very ambitiously as the protagonist seeks to smuggle Poland's gold supply out of the country in September 1939; the daring exploits result from desperation, necessity, despair, honor, patriotism. The settings are well-drawn and the politics well-researched. This is a period piece. Furst brings you to the time and place of the action with his writing. It is honest, gritty, and real. The book is not a single narrative, it is episodic -- like intertwined short stories or novellas. Thus the intensity can wax and wane. Nonetheless, if you are interested in the 1933-1941 time frame, espionage, Eastern Europeans under the shadow of war or all of the above, this is fine literature and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A True Work of Literature
Review: Critics have for years blathered on about such mediocrities as Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and John Le Carre blurring the line between literature and genre fiction, but none of them comes close to Alan Furst. His characters are fully-realized people caught in circumstances beyond their capabilities to understand or control. Their pretentions, their inner lives, and their wholly unspecteted courage is the point of his novels, of which, the Polish Officer is the best. Furst is an elegent aphoristic writer - James Salter comes to mind as his model - and his work in imbued with a deep mood of fatalism, weltschmerz, and sexual heat as redemption for the displaced souls these books.
Rating:
Summary: Very good effort
Review: Excellent Ambleresque novel of espionage set in 1939/40. The atmsphere of the time and the places [Poland, the Ukraine and France is created with a gritty, convincing realism. Clearly Mr Furst can write! His action is complex and interesting but perhaps too episodic. This type of novel can only succeed if sentimentality is strictly eschewed and Furst manages that almost all the time - the rifle toting Jewish violinist appears to be a stray from Captain Corelli's Mandolin and should have been edited out, but he is an exception. It will be interesting to see if Furst's work improves with time as Ambler's did. The technical [really engineering] facet which so enriches Ambler's best work is already present here, though in a different form.
Rating:
Summary: Very good effort
Review: Excellent Ambleresque novel of espionage set in 1939/40. The atmsphere of the time and the places [Poland, the Ukraine and France is created with a gritty, convincing realism. Clearly Mr Furst can write! His action is complex and interesting but perhaps too episodic. This type of novel can only succeed if sentimentality is strictly eschewed and Furst manages that almost all the time - the rifle toting Jewish violinist appears to be a stray from Captain Corelli's Mandolin and should have been edited out, but he is an exception. It will be interesting to see if Furst's work improves with time as Ambler's did. The technical [really engineering] facet which so enriches Ambler's best work is already present here, though in a different form.
Rating: 
Summary: what's the fuss about here?
Review: furst is overrated, but still...it's better than any airport/wallgreen's 'spy novel'...very close to lecarre...BUT unlike sir john, there is no real character here...in 'the honorable schoolboy', you actually cry for the hero spy who lives undercover...in this book, i had no idea why he put himself at such risk for so many different factions...no depth...but that said, a totally relaitsic (from what i understand) portrait of occupied poland and paris.
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