Rating: 
Summary: Great Descriptions...O.K. Story
Review: Furst is tremendous with detail and description...he's done his homework. He's also a very good writer. But I have yet to read the last few chapters...the story is one long adventure about a Polish Officer in the underground that is very linear. I could not develop any empathy for the lead character and the other ones come and go so fast I have forgotten most of them as soon as they exit the chapter.If you simply want to read about an underground commando during WWII, this book is excellent. But if you also like a good story, forget it...it's simply not there.
Rating:
Summary: A little disappointing
Review: Furst is very good at depicting historical situations (occupied Poland, Paris under German authority...). However, that does not save the book. The plot is weak, based on three different and unrelated threads. Also Furst did not create a persona for his hero. In spite of all this, the book is entertaining and clearly above average.
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Summary: Tremendous perspective on Nazis and Culture
Review: How did this gang of thugs and murderers gain and retain power? Alan Furst uses the personal tragedies and triumphs of his many fascinating, well-researched characters to illustrate and confirm what anyone who studies politics must know; that governments often behave out of callow self-interest and that there is always an underclass of bitter, jealous and often violence-prone individuals willing to perpertrate any crime to succeed in their ambitions. Fortunately (for reasons they often don't themselves fully understand) there are also those who risk all to combat these forces; they comprise the heroic characters in Furst's novels.
I had family in the Resistance. In Denmark, Morocco and France they did what they could against the German tyranny and its collaborators. Their recollections seem to me so alike to the writing in these fine books, which illustate so well how ordinary, often frightened people can help to accomplish the impossible. Mr. Furst, may you live long and continue to enthrall and educate new generations as to why and how the civilized must combat tyranny at every hand, no matter what the price.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Read!
Review: I have to disagree somewhat with the two other customer reviews. I found the main character well developed. I found de Milja to be both believable and likeable. The parts of the book set in Poland are outstanding in the author's ability to re-create the atmosphere of the Nazi occupation. I do agree that Dark Star and Night Soldiers are probably better novels, however The Polish Officer is still far superior to most current fiction. I highly recommend this to anyone!
Rating: 
Summary: I loved it
Review: I think Alan Furst writes singularly enjoyable mystery/thrillers. The Polish officer is a very believable look at the travails of a WW2 spy. He gives you a real feel for the constant pressure of living under cover, and in my view, does a great job of characterization. My only quibble with the book (and what keeps it from receiving 5 stars, is that it just sort of dribbles to a close. In my opinion, there's not enough of a real end to the book to make it satisfying for me. Nevertheless, I think that if you like WW2-era spy novels, you'll really like this one.
Rating:
Summary: So Close, Yet So Far...
Review: I'll applaud Mr. Furst for capturing our imagination with a story that focuses on lesser known figures, nations and peoples of World War II. Exotic characters really seem to suit the shady, mysterious world of espionage, and the author does an excellent job with this aspect. Also, the book occasionally creates moods and scenes that really recapture the dark hours of the War (the lone German motorcyclist on the empty streets of Paris is one such moment), and that alone makes this book worth the read. However.... I think Mr. Furst attempts too much within his painfully plodding writing style. From cover to cover, the book is frugal with words to such an extent that it's difficult to follow the story of the characters unless you are really paying attention. And I would guess that most readers, myself included, will find this a challenge because it's hard to care about characters when the author gives you the absolute minimum about them. Dialogue, or at least real interactive dialogue is at a minimum throughout this book, so much so that it's reasonable to wonder whether De Milja has a pulse in some sections. Does he ever really talk with anybody? Even with fellow ex-pats who know he's a spy, De Milja doesn't ever appear to talk about anything of believable (read: human) substance. Rather, like most of the characters, De Milja "functions" from day to day, just doing his job because there's not much else to do. I can see that the writing that helps us establish this "functional-only" window might be a good attempt to recapture the hovering gloom of the times, but I dare you to really care about anyone in this book. From page one, I suspected that the obvious protagonist in the book would survive, and at no point during the reading did I feel that this was in any doubt. Never. The book simply isn't set up to make readers believe that De Milja stands a real chance of perishing. In a word, the good guys are destined to win, and the bad guys are destined to lose; hard to believe this was the case within the reality of 1940-2 Western Europe. Call me crazy, but I would think that espionage would have many more close runs with the authorities, and ones that might, if only momentarily, shake the confidence of those in the spy world. If this window of self-reflection happens to De Milja, our-cartographer-turned-spy, the readers aren't privvy to it, and that really makes it hard to believe that De Milja is human. And that hurts this book; it makes the characters seem contrived and the story pre-scripted.
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Summary: Furst on Fast
Review: I've been following Alan Furst's career since the early 90s, when I first heard a review of Dark Star on NPR. I still feel that Night Soldiers and Dark Star are the best novels he's written -- in equal parts because they are the longest and he took the most time with them (he was, I believe still a journalist when he wrote them), and also because he was still living in Europe when he wrote them, and the atmospherics, the remarkable attention to the details of place, light, sound, and smell, seem somehow more real and spontaneous than in the later novels. But in any case I'm delighted that Furst hasn't stood still -- that he keeps working his formulae in different ways, and particularly at different speeds. The Polish Officer is the fastest paced Furst novel so far. But though as a result it loses some of the smoky "film noir" atmosphere for which the earlier novels are rightly admired, and acquires the somewhat contrived pacing of a Steven Spielberg movie instead, both the individual episodes and the overall effect are so well done that -- if nothing else -- it's impossible not to admire the extraordinary craftsmanship. For example, The Polish Officer contains what may be the best single episode of any of Furst's novels -- as the Paris Gestapo officers play cat and mouse with the operator of a clandestine radio transmitting from Montmartre. Again, such a perfect crescendo of tension, with nothing wasted or misplaced, that it resembles nothing so much as Steven Spielberg at his best. Interestingly, after the Polish Officer, the only thing left to do, except repeat himself note for note and beat for beat, was to slow the pace down dramatically and to write with less focus on plot and more on character, which is what he did with the paired novels, The World at Night and Red Gold.
The Polish Officer is not the best Furst Novel -- a title deserved equally (though for different reasons) by Dark Star and the most recent one, Kingdom of Shadows -- but I've still awarded it five stars for being expert and audacious at the same time. This is remarkable writing by any standard. Enjoy the ride -- just be aware that it's a fast one.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining but not outstanding
Review: If you haven't read Furst's Dark Star or Night Soldier, then Polish Officer will be enjoyable. But those of us who have read the latter books , especially Dark Star have missed the shadows, pathos and passions Furst achieved in those books. The characters especially the main ones in Dark Star were discribed so specifically that as you proceed in each story the reader can contemplate the character's view of the situation. It is not so in Polish Officer. The main character while well articulated is surrounded with bare images of friends and foes. My disappoint in Polish Officer is also brought about by my deep appreciate for Dark Star - which I believe is one of the finest pieces of fiction written in the last decade. Further, there is a polish officer discribed in Dark Star with such clarity and style and he is not the same character that haunts this Polish Officer
Rating:
Summary: Excellent portrayal of behind the scenes WWII resistance
Review: Not Furst's best novel, but a very enjoyable expose of the drama behind the front lines during WWII. The Polish officer in question goes through Europe doing his spycraft and the reader gets a good overview of what was going on in the Resistance.
Rating:
Summary: A Diamond Still in the Rough
Review: Overall, The Polish Officer has more to offer than most in its genre. The atmosphere of the novel is really strong: dark, gritty, forboding. Furst's expert knowledge of the day-to-day affairs of WWII Europe is first-rate, and adds to the realism. Beyond that, there were several problems that I found distracting. The main character, deMilja, always seems remote and detached from the reader. I never got a sense of his personality and found myself struggling to stay interested in him. The book is not a thriller, per se, but there were moments that attempted to be tense. In the execution, however, the tension deflated way too early and I never found myself on the edge of my seat. Alan Furst has enormous potential, and I'm told that his later novels are much better--that he comes into his own as a writer. One can see his potential in the Polish Officer, which would make a great film: that medium might more effectively capture the emotion, depth of character, and tension that is lacking in the novel.
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